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PATRICIA’S 

AWAKENING 













PATRICIA’S 

AWAKENING 


BY 

HAROLD JAMES BARRETT 


/ 


/» 


NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 







CONTENTS 

PART I 

PAGE 

A Girl of Today.. • 3 

PART II 

A Girl of Yesterday.149 

PART III 

The Mills of the Gods.273 









PART ONE 
A GIRL OF TO-DAY 



















Patricia’s Awakening 

CHAPTER I 

“Now there’s an example, an extreme case, 
I’ll admit.” Mrs. Grimshaw frowned dis¬ 
approvingly as Patricia Keller cleared the 
veranda steps in one leap, flung her golf sticks 
into the tonneau, stepped on the starter and 
shot down the hotel driveway. “She was one 
of a crowd who came in at one o’clock this 
morning unchaperoned. I heard them under 
my window. When I was a girl,” and the 
elderly widow was embarked upon her favorite 
theme. 

“Oh, Pat will come out all right,” defended 
Mrs. Drew. “Despite her gorgeous looks, she 
has brains. And isn’t she a superb looking 
creature?” 

“I must say I can’t altogether agree with 
you, on either point.” Mrs. Grimshaw 
emphasized her opinion by fanning with in¬ 
creased vigor. Although the chill waters of 

3 


4 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

the Atlantic spread before her, the phantom 
breaths which barely rippled the surface of 
the bay were warm from sun-drenched inland 
fields. 

“There’s something blatant about her 
appearance—like a girl on a magazine cover. 
Of course she’s rouged the way they all are 
nowadays. And as for brains, why, it’s dis¬ 
graceful the sort of education they get at those 
fashionable finishing schools. I quizzed her 
one morning and she doesn’t know a Manet 
from a Monet, and had an idea that Jane 
Austen was a popular actress. But then, you 
can’t altogether blame her. She hasn’t much 
background. I don’t think the Kellers are 
persons of culture.” Mrs. Grimshaw was a 
person of culture. 

“No, I wouldn’t bank on Pat’s education,” 
conceded Mrs. Drew with a smile. “Not an 
intellectual type, perhaps a bit hoidenish. 
But so many intellectual people lack brains 
and so many people of no particular culture 
are often extremely intelligent. They think 
directly, I mean; not through the prism of 
ready-made ideas. And that’s what I like 
about Pat.” 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 5 


Mrs. Grimshaw’s silence was eloquent. 
The two women seldom agreed. Mrs. Grim- 
shaw was from Boston; Mrs. Drew from 
Kansas City. 

“Where’s Helen?” Patricia strode through 
the club impatiently. “Helen Trescott—any¬ 
body seen her?” Nobody had. 

“I’ll play you a round,” suggested Freddie 
Elliott, sleek and blond, who sat in a shaded 
corner of the porch, his sweater flung non¬ 
chalantly across his chairback, the black H 
conspicuously displayed, proclaiming his 
achievements. Patricia shook her head. She 
was eschewing athletic men that season. 

“They’re so dull,” she complained. “And 
so amusingly vain about their fame. Nor do 
you ever hear of them after their college days 
except as stockbrokers or politicians or law¬ 
yers. Of course every man ought to keep fit, 
but I mean the specialists, the varsity men. 
They’re not my ideal.” Many men had de¬ 
voted earnest thought to this question of 
Patricia’s ideal. Once established one might 
perhaps play up to it. But she was irritat¬ 
ingly vague and negative in her description 


6 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

and, what was worse, she herself confessed that 
it was constantly changing. She had, how¬ 
ever, condescended to be rather more explicit 
than usual one evening at the Lockhart’s when, 
as one of a group watching the moon rise over 
the bay, a mood of unwonted sentiment had 
descended. 

“Oh, I’ve never met anyone in the least like 
him,” she affirmed. “But he’s quaint and 
quizzical and not interested in making money. 
And he’s tall and awkward and very simple in 
worldly things and very big, I mean his nature, 
and everyone trusts him, men and women and 
children and animals, and people could cheat 
him without his knowing it, but nobody does, 
and he’s a gentleman in a sense that nobody 
I’ve ever known is, though he ignores etiquette. 
And he’s very, very wise in the things that 
really count. He’s something like Lincoln 
but less practical. And he’d think our crowd 
was just about the nuttiest bunch he’d ever 
seen, but he wouldn’t feel superior; he finds 
something to like in ’most everybody. All 
kinds of people who have cheap shoddy stand¬ 
ards : family or breeding or money or success: 
would nevertheless have to respect him and— 
oh, I don’t know. Sometimes I’ve seen men 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 7 


who looked something like him in the Rocky 
Mountain states but—well, I’m certainly get¬ 
ting maudlin. Where’s the shaker?” 

Next morning Wolcott Rogers who had 
lengthened a two weeks’ stay to two months 
returned to New York. “First time I ever 
saw a man get his coup de grace in public,” 
was Alec Sennett’s comment. But Patricia 
when the subject was revived had laughed 
cynically and disclaimed all responsibility for 
her portrait. “It was just a mood,” she 
asserted, and changed the subject. 

“Some looker!” exclaimed a new arrival as 
Patricia drove away. “And say! when the 
sun caught her hair. Those gold glints! 
Why didn’t you introduce me?” 

“That’s what I said to a fellow once,” was 
Freddie’s reply. “Later he did. And I be¬ 
came specimen number 62,478. That was last 
summer. Now you want to become case num¬ 
ber 71,647. If you consider that a distinction, 
I’ll frame it up. That’s Patricia Keller.” 

“Oh, it is! I heard about her out in Santa 
Barbara last winter. She’d just gone down 
to Coronado. She was at Miss Prentice’s with 
my sister, but I never met her. Well, she’s 
all they said and then some.” 


8 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


“Eats ’em alive,” was Elliott’s morose com¬ 
ment. “Have a drink?” 

Patricia was just as well pleased that Helen 
Trescott had forgotten her appointment. 
Ever since she “came out” five years before, 
her life, as she looked back upon it, seemed to 
her as if lived in a perpetual crowd. Five 
years crammed with a ceaseless feverish round 
of trivialities: dances, football games, week¬ 
end parties, bridge, the theatre, Yale proms, 
Harvard Class Days. Five years filled with 
lovers, “affaires,” flirtations; suitors of every 
type—some gay and gallant, some solemn and 
portentous, some flaccid and dog-like in their 
adoration, one or two unpleasant in the process 
of being replaced. She was at twenty-five as 
yet unmarried, this being a source of irritation 
to her mother who bore her responsibilities far 
from lightly. 

Helen’s absence gave her a free afternoon. 
She would for once spend it by herself. Had 
she lost the power to dream, she wondered, 
that precious gift which had so enriched her 
life during her girlhood? Turning north¬ 
ward, she drove leisurely through shaded roads 
and fields strewn with a creamy fall of wild 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 9 


carrot. White farmhouses, many of them 
dating back apparently to New England’s 
colonial days, drowsed contentedly in the 
afternoon sun. 

“What a happy peaceful countryside,” 
Patricia mused. But within herself she felt 
the tug of a vague longing, the stir of an un¬ 
defined unrest. Swinging finally to the east¬ 
ward, she found herself upon the shore road. 
A cow-path lured her out upon a bold point 
and she pulled up at last by the pebbled beach. 
The sea, a gleaming sapphire, flecked with 
faint flaws from the light off-shore breeze, 
mirrored a few white clouds drifting listlessly 
to the east. She inhaled the warm air, sweet 
with the commingled fragrance of bayberry 
and the ocean. A rug from the car softened 
the sharp surfaces of the granite and Patricia 
settled herself snugly within the shadow of an 
overhanging ledge and lighted a cigarette. 
The waves splashed placidly at her feet. She 
gazed idly over the glittering floor for awhile 
then opened a book. 

Mrs. Grimshaw’s criticism of the girl was, 
in great measure, merited. Patricia was in 
any orthodox sense far from well educated. 
Most decidedly she was not “intellectual.” 


10 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

To use a Shavian comparison, she belonged in 
Horseback Hall rather than in Heartbreak 
House; at least that was her pose. It was 
part of her pose to pretend to Mrs. Grimshaw 
that she had never heard of Jane Austen 
although as a matter of fact that English 
author had been a part of her prescribed read¬ 
ing at school. The confusing element in 
Patricia, however, was that she was quite 
likely to remark to some startled swain after 
a couple of weeks’ acquaintance: 

“How do you like my pose? I’ve been 
doing ‘Peg o’ my Heart’ for you, but I’m tired 
of it. To-morrow I’ll begin another role, 
something more sophisticated, yet not too 
much so. My range is, after all, rather 
limited, being a blonde. Cuts me out of vamp 
roles, for example.” 

With Mrs. Drew, however, Patricia was 
herself and it was from her that she had 
borrowed the little volume which she now 
scanned in a mood of lazy content. Written 
by a famous nerve specialist, it dealt with his 
formula for living. There were four ele¬ 
ments, he asserted, upon the correct relation¬ 
ship of which a life’s mental health and happi¬ 
ness depended. They were Work, Play, 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 11 


Love and Worship. “The second is the only 
factor I have,” she thought, and with a sense, 
for the moment, of distaste she recalled the 
men to whom she had given her lips and of how 
little it had meant. 

A warm-blooded, vital, vigorous girl, Pa¬ 
tricia hungered for love in its complete mani¬ 
festation. It was this insistence of hers upon 
all or nothing, her instinctive realization that 
upon this perhaps more than upon any other 
single factor her happiness depended which 
explained her impatient and ruthless rejection 
of her lovers, upon their failure to measure up. 
Sometimes in moods of disillusionment she 
questioned the reality of love. Obviously it 
was of rare occurrence. Yet so intense was 
Patricia’s nature that rather than compromise, 
rather than accept a man because he was, by 
her mother’s standard, thoroughly eligible, she 
would, she assured herself, remain unmarried. 

And yet, she reflected, how many millions of 
girls have longed for love only to be drugged 
by the senses into a makeshift matrimony 
which became after a few years an intolerable 
yoke to be borne philosophically by both for 
the sake of the children. Patricia’s mind, as 
her friend had said, had a penetrating quality 


12 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

which enabled her to be honest with herself and 
which drove like a knife into others’ pre¬ 
tensions. But of what avail is the individual 
brain when smothered beneath the age-old 
passions, the pull of man to woman? The 
force to which the entire vast and incompre¬ 
hensible drama of humanity traces? 

The mellowed light of late afternoon gilded 
with glamour the sails of a passing schooner 
when Patricia, stretching with the sheer sen¬ 
suous pleasure of a cat in the sun, arose and 
started toward home. She would, she con¬ 
cluded, surprise her father, and tender him the 
doubtful pleasure of a drive home. Patricia’s 
driving was trying to the nerves of the elderly. 
A few miles brought her to another path which 
led eastward and after bumping over ruts and 
boulders for a half mile, she halted at the crest 
of a bold promontory, the seaward section of 
which had been ruthlessly ravaged by her 
father’s steam drills and dynamite to form a 
breakwater for a neighboring harbor. 

The Keller Construction Company was, in 
its field, a national institution and, ever since 
babyhood, Patricia had been familiar with the 
terminology of this picturesque and highly 
hazardous pursuit. Twice in her own life, her 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 13 


father had come such serious croppers through 
bad weather conditions or bids proffered too 
low that the Kellers had had to revise their 
living standards completely and, for a period, 
drop out of the gay world which seemed 
to Patricia her birthright. From her vantage 
point, she could look down into the floor of the 
quarry, a hundred feet beneath. The drillers 
sat astride their steam steeds which hammered 
away, biting into the hard granite with a 
nervous frenzy, a kind of vicious intensity, 
as though time pressed and the enemy must 
be overcome. The heavy traveling cranes 
picked up the fractured granite from ,a pre¬ 
vious blast and, pirouetting with amusing and 
almost coquettish dexterity, carried their load 
to the waiting cars which at intervals ran out 
upon the dock to the dump scows. 

Patricia could distinguish her father’s 
heavy, stubby figure as he strolled about with 
the superintendent, Jerry O’Hearn, and a 
stranger, nattily dressed, she noted, in a 
smartly cut gray suit. 

Suddenly a voice yelled with long-drawn- 
out intonation, “Fi-yah!” Patricia recog¬ 
nized it as “Fire,” the warning signal for a 
blast, or in the parlance of the business, a 


14 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


“shot.” The excitable Italians began run¬ 
ning frantically to safety. There was no 
great need of haste but everyone enjoyed pre¬ 
tending that there was. Four or five dark 
Sicilians suddenly materalized from beneath 
and rushed at Patricia, gesticulating violently. 
“Da shotta! da shotta!” they announced in 
hysterical accents. “Dey fire da shotta! 
Run lika hella!” and they waved their arms 
despairingly. Patricia smiled and drove to a 
safe point whence she could observe the effect 
of “da shotta.” 

Her father, the stranger and Jerry, she saw, 
disdained to leave the quarry floor but 
crouched behind a traveling crane. The 
powder-man with his battery was not far from 
her and as his arms pressed down on the 
plunger, the earth heaved, a deafening, rasp¬ 
ing, cataclysmic roar rent the air, and a huge 
mass of the perpendicular wall of the quarry 
was lifted outward in a solid section to crash 
in chaos beneath. As the dust and smoke 
drifted to leeward, Patricia’s father spied her 
on the height. Accompanied by his compan¬ 
ion, he climbed the winding pathway which 
brought him finally to where she sat. 

“Hello, Pat. Saw the shot—eh? Let me 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 15 


present Mr. Wellington. He’s coming back 
to the hotel with us for dinner.” 

A naturally keen observer, and inclined to 
interpret character by those little details which 
reveal so much, Patricia was amused by Well¬ 
ington’s easy air of proprietorship as he swung 
in beside her leaving her father to the lonely 
dignity of the tonneau. Most men were in¬ 
clined to defer to John B. Keller. But this 
man, she concluded instantly, deferred to no 
one. 

He was, she guessed, in his early thirties. 
With his large, full head well set upon broad 
shoulders, his deep chest and well-muscled 
body which would, if not kept in condition, 
easily become portly, Richard Beale Welling¬ 
ton usually impressed people as being several 
years older than his actual age. Handsome 
in a dark tropical fashion, with a mouth firm, 
though full lipped, and features which vaguely 
recalled to Patricia’s memory busts of Roman 
emperors, he would, she reflected, appeal 
strongly to the primitive type of woman. 
And to that sort of woman he would be a 
brutal master. His hands, the nails carefully 
manicured, were, she observed, unpleasantly 
thick, with blunt fingers. 


16 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


“He himself,” she commented inwardly, “is 
essentially simple, although not without guile, 
a ‘health and wealth’ type; sensual, egotistical, 
very possibly a Don Juan. And that round 
skull spells the opportunist. He thinks con¬ 
cretely”—all this as they chattered idly, flash¬ 
ing past cove and headland, the former em¬ 
purpled in the luminous shadows of the wan¬ 
ing day. Wellington, it developed, was also 
a contractor, occasionally a competitor. Ordi¬ 
narily, however, his firm confined itself chiefly 
to railroad work while Keller figured more in 
the marine field. 

The man had a certain quiet dignity; he was 
responsive without being over-affable, which 
Patricia found likeable. He seemed so much 
more of a man than her Country Club crowd, 
so many of whom had inherited titular honors 
and even in middle age seemed immature, un¬ 
seasoned. Wellington, she felt certain, had 
fought his way up and in a business which, in 
a commercial sense, requires more cold courage 
than almost any other. Under the influence 
of the man’s personality, she felt herself re¬ 
vising her first snap judgment. It occurred 
to her to wonder if he were married. With 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING IT 


some finesse, she maneuvered the conversation 
to reveal this point naturally. There was a 
certain simple pathos in his frank, “No, I’m 
not married. I married young but we were 
not suited to each other. So we separated.” 

Keller took no part in their talk but leaned 
back in his corner, occasionally taking a pull 
at his cigar. He was apparently rapt in some 
business problem; was, as a matter of fact, 
working out in his mind the details of the 
merger which he was contemplating with 
Wellington’s interests. Behind that bland 
red face and genial manner, which were a fit 
index to John B. Keller in the role of husband 
and father, was a shrewd brain which was not 
too particular about ethics when there was 
enough at stake. 

Keller’s living came from the money 
appropriated by Congress in the River and 
Harbor Bill. After the politicians at Wash¬ 
ington had agreed among themselves as to the 
apportionment of the contents of the pork 
barrel, the government engineers drew up 
specifications upon which sealed bids were sub¬ 
mitted by competing contractors. Upon more 
than one occasion, Keller’s bid, the lowest, had 


18 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

shaved its nearest competitor by a suspiciously 
narrow margin. It was implied that there 
had been a leak. 

Then there was that unfortunate promotion 
enterprise, unfortunate, that is, for the invest¬ 
ors. It was a granite quarry to be developed 
for building stone, paving blocks and monu¬ 
mental work, a line in which Keller had no ex¬ 
perience. He took an option on the property, 
however; incorporated, and floated the stock 
through some obscure Wall Street investment 
brokers. The prospectus promised a great 
deal and Keller’s name helped. It never paid, 
however, and some people questioned if Keller 
had ever had much faith in it. The receiver 
discovered that he had sold his stock in the 
midst of the brisk promotion campaign. 
Legal? Perfectly. But it looked strange. 

Patricia knew nothing of this phase of her 
father’s activities. To her he was a kind, in¬ 
dulgent comrade, to be bullied occasionally 
for his own good, to be affectionately patron¬ 
ized, to be petted and his hair tenderly rumpled 
when he was especially generous. She was 
the apple of his eye, a fact which she had al¬ 
ways taken for granted. Her brother, Clif¬ 
ford, a sub-Freshman at Harvard, was her 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 19 

mother’s favorite, Patricia, her father’s. It 
was his hope that she would marry into some 
family whose wealth had a more solid foun¬ 
dation than his own, realizing as he did the in¬ 
evitable risks of his business. It was already 
a question in his mind whether the Bellport 
Breakwater had not been figured too low. 
Hence his interest in Wellington’s proposal. 

The islands off Shannon’s Point were be- 
dreamed in twilight mists when Patricia pulled 
up at the hotel. “No,” she was asserting 
when the engine ceased its throbbing, “one 
need point to but one idyllically happy 
marriage to prove the existence of love. 
What if ninety-nine and forty-four hun¬ 
dredths fail?” 

“Well, point to it,” challenged Wellington. 
They had drifted to the subject through the 
little book which he had noted on the seat be¬ 
side him. “It is tragic or comic, people’s pa¬ 
thetic optimism in the face of all the evidence 
to the contrary; tragic to the serious, comic to 
the cynical. But certainly it is clear that love 
is but a glossing over, an attempt at trans¬ 
mutation of a primitive universal instinct. 
Hence every marriage finally degenerates into 
futile bickerings or bovine content, depending 


20 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


entirely upon circumstance and the disposi¬ 
tions of the principals.” 

“Well, I have a primitive pull toward the 
dinner table,” she asserted. “And there per¬ 
haps we’ll fight it out further.” 

“It would be mildly amusing to make you 
eat your words, Mr. Wellington,” she reflected 
as the two men were enveloped in the gay 
throng which crowded the broad veranda at 
this hour. “But it wouldn’t prove anything.” 
She drove back to the garage, parked the car, 
and dashed upstairs, to reappear shortly, ra¬ 
diant in an arresting costume of orchid crepe- 
de-Chine designed to do complete justice to 
her delicate blonde loveliness. 


CHAPTER II 


“But, Mother, don’t you see? That’s just 
another of your Victorian notions. The differ¬ 
ence between our viewpoints is not merely 
the inevitable difference of mother and 
daughter. It reflects the gulf that separates 
your generation from mine. The world has 
moved a lot since you were a girl in the seven¬ 
ties.” Patricia had an air of patient tolerance 
as though correcting a well-meaning but un¬ 
sophisticated child. 

“Moved backwards,” was Mrs. Keller’s grim 
comment. She was a fashionably, too fashion¬ 
ably, dressed woman in her fifties whose un¬ 
fashionable tendency toward flesh she sought 
to disguise by an obvious and elaborate system 
of tortured corseting. The two women spoke 
in subdued tones so that their neighbors on the 
porch of the Tudor Arms should not overhear. 

“No, it’s just different,” protested Patricia. 
“It seems to me, too, that we are more honest 
in our thinking. Take the very point at issue. 
I take a man out for an evening’s sail in the 
21 


22 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


Tadpole. The wind drops and we get in at 
three o’clock. You say I should have stayed 
inshore to avoid the chance of such an occur¬ 
rence ; that in your day such an incident would 
have cost a girl her reputation. All I can say 
about your generation is ‘honi soit qui mal y 
pensef Furthermore, I can’t get it clear 
whether your objection is politic or ethical. 
Anyway I can assure you that I won’t be 
ostracised, if that is what you fear.” 

“I don’t fear it. Nothing but murder, 
apparently, warrants ostracising nowadays. 
What I wanted you to realize was this. It 
isn’t as though Mr. Wellington were a college 
undergraduate. He is a man in his thirties. 
You’ve known him only two weeks. What do 
any of us know about him except that he is 
socially presentable and a business associate of 
your father? Doubtless his Bradstreet 
rating is good but that isn’t the point. I am 
older than you and I can just feel in that man 
that he’s the kind that doesn’t respect women. 
He’s the sort that would try to kiss a pretty 
girl, if opportunity offered, after he’d met her 
a half dozen times.” 

“Three times, Mother,” interrupted Pa¬ 
tricia. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 23 


“Exactly,” continued Mrs. Keller in dour 
triumph. “And still you compromise yourself 
with him and wonder why I, your mother, 
should object. Here he is now.” From Mrs. 
Keller’s wan smile Wellington deduced that 
he had been under adverse criticism. The 
deal with Wellington closed, Keller had two 
weeks previous left for the Gulf coast to over¬ 
see the inauguration of a new contract, leav¬ 
ing the younger man to handle the Bellport 
project. Living at the same hotel and so 
closely connected commercially, it was in¬ 
evitable that he should be in constant contact 
with Patricia. The man had qualities to which 
she responded. 

Reacting from the frankly pagan golf-mad 
group of which she had formed one the pre¬ 
vious summer, she had gravitated toward a 
semi-artistic set which read the Little Review 
and knew the difference between a monotype 
and an aquatint. The chain of rather ob¬ 
trusively expensive summer resorts which ex¬ 
tended along this part of the New England 
coast offered a varied assortment of milieus to 
a girl like Patricia whose charm and beauty 
opened all doors. But Julian Talbot’s aphor¬ 
isms began to pall upon repetition and Pamela 


24 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


Sheldon’s chatter lifted bodily from Vanity 
Fair and The Spur seemed less stimulating 
after one had read the original. Wellington 
was refreshingly himself or was at least 
genuinely the section of himself which he con¬ 
descended to expose. So although he spent 
his days at the quarry, on the floating stock, or 
in Boston, Patricia unconsciously drifted into 
the habit of counting upon his evenings. She 
introduced him to her crowd which found him 
piquant in his blindness to the subtle shades 
which they considered significant. 

Madge Culver, olive-skinned, dark-haired 
with dreaming dark eyes, was inclined to 
idealize him. “He is the spirit of to-day per¬ 
sonified,” she asserted. “All that bright keen 
hardness, that Napoleonic directness which is 
America. And his work! Isn’t it truly ro¬ 
mantic? Wrestling with the blind forces of 
nature to further the ends of commerce. He 
moulds granite to his grim resolve! Seems 
symbolic somehow—doesn’t it?” She sulked 
for a half hour when Jack Ingersoll offered to 
set it to music. Madge had literary aspi¬ 
rations. 

He did not score very strongly with the men, 
however. “There’s something about that 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 25 


chap Wellington, something I can’t put my 
finger on which I don’t like,” was Ingersoll’s 
verdict. “There’s something of the leopard 
about him, a cold selfishness. He isn’t re¬ 
liable.” 

But Patricia danced with him, sailed with 
him, flirted with him. “He intrigues me,” she 
confessed. The word was not yet shopworn. 

“The Valiant is in,” announced Wellington, 
lighting his perfecto with the ritualistic air 
which marks the first cigar of the day, the after 
breakfast smoke. “They just ’phoned me 
from the quarry.” 

“Oh, I want to see it! I’ll drive down with 
you.” The Valiant was a new tug purchased 
by Keller in New York and Patricia, who had 
sailed a boat from the age of twelve, had been 
looking forward to its arrival. 

“And Mrs. Keller?” suggested Wellington 
politely. 

But Mrs. Keller pleaded a meeting of a 
Bazaar committee. 

“A beauty, isn’t she, Jerry?” Patricia 
glanced along the length of the new boat with 
an appraising eye. 

“Ought to be, Miss Patricia. She cost 


26 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


nearly a hundred thousand. Beauty comes 
high, but it’s worth it.” The old Irishman’s 
grin implied that he was trying to pay a com¬ 
pliment. He had known Patricia from the 
cradle. In its fresh coat of paint and its 
bright-work shining as on a private yacht, the 
big tug looked smart and shipshape. 

“We’ll take her out for a run around the 
island as soon as they finish coaling,” suggested 
Wellington. 

“I’d love it. And we’ll get up some parties 
for moonlight nights. That will be piquant. 
Sailing parties on a tug boat.” They climbed 
up to the pilot house where the captain, a taci¬ 
turn Swede, sat reading a copy of a cheap 
magazine devoted to Western stories. He 
seemed dazed at Patricia’s advent but soon 
melted. Sensing entertainment possibilities 
in the new boat she meant to enlist its captain’s 
allegiance. She exclaimed with pleasure as 
they cast off and the reversed propeller 
churned the water. A fresh easterly breeze 
brought the color to her cheeks, the boat rocked 
gracefully to a light ground swell; Patricia 
who passionately loved the sea felt that only 
some absurd subjective inhibition prevented 
her from flying as easily and lightly as the 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 27 


white gulls which soared about the stack. 
Circling Crooksmouth Island they swung out 
to sea for a bit, finally bringing up at the dock 
within the hour. 

“She’s all right,” was Wellington’s verdict. 
He had spent half the time in the engine room. 
“Of course your father had her surveyed be¬ 
fore he bought her.” 

As they made their way through the quarry, 
Patricia studied the friendly Italian faces 
which scanned her in shy admiration. From 
her years of contact with the race, remote as it 
was, she had developed a very real affection 
for it. They were so gay and childishly cheer¬ 
ful under conditions which seemed to her to 
make it difficult. Some of these men had been 
working for her father for fifteen years, travel¬ 
ing from job to job, up and down the coast 
and even out to the Great Lakes. 

She was in the very heart of the hive. 
Cranes spun in lurid arcs shifting twenty-ton 
blocks with nice precision. The staccato 
clamor of the batteries of steam drills quick¬ 
ened her blood, heightened her color. The 
place seemed keyed unbearably high and the 
ragged wraiths of steam tossed restlessly be¬ 
fore the fresh sea breeze lent the final note. 


28 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


“Jazz,” she murmured, and her eyes danced. 
She realized, she thought, why the men who 
follow that pursuit can seldom be induced to 
retire when assured a comfortable fortune. 
Each contract is a hazardous gamble with a 
hundred incalculable factors. And from their 
work they gain the excitement which civilized 
man, ridden by atavistic impulses to which he 
responds but fails to comprehend, craves and 
too often seeks in drink and debauchery. 

“Meester Welleenton, Meester Welleen- 
ton!” A walking boss, Tony Cellini, came 
clambering hurriedly up the bank, tipping his 
hat respectfully. Cellini was a man of some 
position among his compatriots. His wife 
with the aid of a girl ran one of the shacks on 
the hill in which the men ate and slept. 
Cellini himself was a sort of padrone. Almost 
all of the sixty men who boarded at his table 
had been secured by him through obscure 
methods which involved considerable corre¬ 
spondence with relatives in Italy. 

“Joe de Polo, he leava tree days. Go to 
worka Bellport Granite.” Cellini waved his 
hand in the direction of a building stone quarry 
some three miles distant. “He comma back 
lassa night. Taka one—two—tree—four 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 29 


men. More money. Maka mad. Maka 
keepa way. He say, ‘Comma back, getta 
more.’ ” Cellini’s voice shrilled excitedly. 
He had a financial interest in the men’s re¬ 
maining. 

“De Polo? Fellow with light hair?” 

“Si. Badda man.” 

“Tell O’Hearn.” Wellington cut him 
short, but he was vexed at the news. “Why 
don’t they go up to the city and get their own 
men?” he grumbled. Leaving the quarry be¬ 
hind, they climbed over the brow of the hill. 
Patricia had left her car near the road. 

“Who’s that skulking around the boarding 
house, I wonder? I’ll bet it’s that dago. I’ll 
teach him,” and at a half run he approached 
the renegade. Patricia stood watching. She 
could not hear them clearly but from the 
pantomime, Wellington ordered him off; 
the Italian replied pertly and Wellington 
promptly knocked him down. The man, a 
little chap, showed no fight. As he tried to 
slink off, Wellington sprang at him with a sort 
of feline fury, knocking him down again, and 
began to kick him savagely. As he arose, 
Wellington seemed completely to lose control 
of himself and once more bore him down. Pa- 


80 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

tricia’s heart began to quicken. Was he going 
to kill the man?- De Polo lay limp and semi¬ 
conscious when Wellington finally ceased. 
After a few moments he seemed to revive and 
crept off holding one arm as though it were 
broken. Wellington straightened his tie, 
picked up his hat and breathing heavily from 
his exertions approached her. His eyes 
glared strangely. 

“That’s that,” he remarked. “He’ll stay 
away for awhile. He’ll bear the marks of that 
for weeks. Hope it didn’t bother you. I had 
to settle it when the chance offered. They’re 
only cattle and have got to be treated 
rough.” 

“I’d certainly call that rough. I don’t call 
it a very sporting thing. The man was out¬ 
weighed thirty pounds and so far as I could 
see was willing enough to quit after you 
knocked him down.” 

“You don’t expect a fight to resemble a 
game of ping pong.” 

Patricia seemed to detect an apologetic 
tone. 

“Well, here’s the car,” he continued. “I’m 
sorry about the row. Just remember the trip 
in the Valiant ” 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 31 


But Patricia could not forget the expression 
of his face when he was kicking his victim. 
“What jungle trait was that?” she reflected. 
“I wonder what tale the ex-Mrs. Wellington 
has to tell?” 


CHAPTER III 


“Say, Pat, you ought to get down to the 
quarry. That new super is all Dad said, and 
then some. I don’t wonder he made such a 
showing on that Georgia contract. Funny 
chap to be—” 

“Ready about!” called Patricia as she swung 
the tiller over, and the Tadpole with mainsail 
flapping rounded the buoy off Bosun’s Ledge. 
It was a puffy August day and the little half¬ 
rater was tender. Clifford shifted to the 
weather side. 

“Funny chap to be in this work,” continued 
her brother. “The Parson, Captain Tucker 
calls him. Parson Gordon. He came up 
with him from the Blake’s Point job and the 
Captain says he’s ‘there.’ Says he thought he 
was just a theorist at first but had to admit he 
got the stone out. He’s a quiet chap, but 
there’s something about him that you like.” 

Patricia slacked off the mainsheet as a heavy 
puff knocked the trim little craft down so far 
that green water poured over the lee rail. 

32 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 33 


“Look out!” yelled the youth. “I don’t 
want to soak this suit. Why don’t you luff 
for those knock-downs?” 

“Luff your grandmother. Listen to the 
child. And wasn’t I sailing boats when you 
were on the bottle? How does Jerry like it?” 

“Jerry was relieved to have him come. 
You see this is the first job he was ever put in 
charge of and he’s too old to take new respon¬ 
sibilities. He was worried nearly to death.” 

“But Wellington’s here.” 

“Yes, but he’s a railroad man. It was the 
floating stock that got on Jerry’s nerves. But 
what I mean is funny—you know how every 
super you ever heard of is a kind of a bucko 
mate. Goes around yelling and cursing every 
little while to put the fear o’ God into ’em, as 
Jerry says. Well, you couldn’t picture this 
fellow in that part. He’s got a different slant 
on the whole thing. Has all kinds of schemes 
that make the men move more stone, earn more 
money and get more fun out of the work. It’s 
quite interesting. He’ll divide a group into 
two gangs, say, and offer a prize for the one 
that loads the greatest number of cars in a 
morning, or drills the most footage. Then 
everybody, down to the waterboy, gets a bonus 


34 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


on the month’s showing of tonnage dumped— 
keeps everyone on his toes—and things like 
that. He studies the methods of the fastest 
worker, whether it’s on a drill or loading or 
handling a crane, and teaches the others— 
brings ’em up to that standard. They don’t 
have to use any more effort but have less lost 
motion. He says it’s nothing but what they’ve 
been doing in factory production for years.” 

The boy ran on while Patricia watched the 
peak closely for that hint of a ripple in the sail 
that would spell cramping. They were close- 
hauled and she always sailed a boat as though 
she were in a race, carried full sail when 
pleasure parties reefed. The eager tug of the 
tiller, the spindrift whipping her cheeks, the 
rhythmic surge of the sea to which her whole 
being seemed attuned—Patricia became fairly 
drunk with it. With her shining hair, en- 
haloed by the August sun, she seemed a Norse 
sea nymph riding the gale. To ship with 
Patricia on a breezy day was trying to the 
nervous. 

The brother and sister lived in that stim¬ 
ulating state of armed neutrality which 
generally marks the bond among Americans, 
a condition which hid a very real affection. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 85 


Clifford was a quaint youth; precise, a trifle 
pedantic, old-fashioned—always pottering 
about with radio outfits and gas engines and 
already evincing a strongly defined tendency 
toward biology. He looked forward to shar¬ 
ing his father’s responsibilities with little en¬ 
thusiasm, considering his parent incredibly 
slack, unscientific and reckless, a man who 
must have blundered into success. John 
Keller studied his son with mingled respect 
and an instinctive repugnance. He was un¬ 
easily aware that somehow the boy’s ethics 
were superior to his own; he respected his dem¬ 
onstrated ability to pull an automobile down 
and put it together again. But that meticu¬ 
lous old-maidish quality which was a constant 
source of amusement to Patricia rubbed him 
on the raw. 

“It isn’t natural,” he protested to his wife. 
“You can’t handle a breakwater job with that 
kind of a make-up. Maybe I’d better make 
him a lawyer. He thinks we’re a wild gang, 
all three of us. You’d think he was our 
grandfather.” 

“Let’s run down to the quarry,” suggested 
Patricia, glancing at her watch. “We can 
make it in an hour with this wind.” She 


86 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


swung the helm over. Clifford sprang to the 
main sheet and eased it off gently as the boat 
spun around. Characteristically the girl was 
jibing in a heavy puff. 

“You would jibe her,” was the boy’s wither¬ 
ing comment as the light 18-footer staggered 
beneath the strain and her cockpit filled. 
“Some day you’ll lift the mast out of her.” 

“Light me a Murad, Cliff. There’s a dar¬ 
ling,” and Patricia broke into 

With a wet sheet and a flowing sea 
And a wind that follows fast. 

“Nut!” was Clifford’s comment. “God 
help your husband, that’s all. You’ll shatter 
his nervous system.” 

“Then I’ll get another. They seem to be 
easily accumulated. But I won’t marry a 
man of that type.” 

“Nobody knows whom he’ll marry,” was 
the boy’s sententious comment. “But I don’t 
know that it makes much difference. After 
the glamour has gone, I mean. Better pick 
out someone whose tastes and interests are 
congenial. Then you’re not so bored as other¬ 
wise.” 

“Out of the mouths of babes,” Patricia was 


PATRICIA S AWAKENING 37 


derisive. “You’re judging by our crowd. 
They’ve all got too much money.” 

“Merely means one less factor to row about. 
People who have to scrimp argue about money 
in addition to everything else. But I’ll tell 
you one fellow I’d sidestep and that’s Welling¬ 
ton.” Clifford became impressively earnest. 
“I’m a man, Pat, and know life better than 
you. There’s something I don’t like about 
that fellow.” 

“Thanks for the sideline coaching. You 
assume too much. Mr. Wellington’s in¬ 
tentions are not serious.” Patricia laughed 
lightly. 

“They all get serious with you sooner or 
later. I don’t know what it is. I can’t see 
blondes myself. But you are a good looker,” 
he seemed to admit it grudgingly. 

“Cliff, you’re a scream!” This boy, only a 
couple of years out of short trousers—her 
mentor. “I don’t know how you got into the 
family but you’re better than the Winter 
Garden.” The boy shrugged his shoulders 
philosophically. Why waste his wisdom on 
this scatter-brained blonde? He extracted a 
pipe and pouch from his pocket and lighted up. 
It was his one vice. So far as his family knew 


38 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


he had never had a drink. “I wish he would 
take a drink now and then,” his father said. 

Patricia lay back comfortably, absently 
watching the green shore slip by. Sailing be¬ 
fore the wind as they were, the boat required 
little attention. She was thinking about 
Wellington. Her reply to her brother had 
been disingenuous. Wellington had become 
decidedly serious. Repelled by him as she had 
been on sight, he nevertheless had an appeal 
for her, an appeal which a less clear-visioned 
girl would have confused with love. He was 
magnetic and there was a ruthless forthright 
quality about his lovemaking which stirred 
the primitive within Patricia. Only the previ¬ 
ous evening as they had strolled along the 
cliffs during an intermission, he had taken her 
fiercely in his arms and found her lips. The 
music was throbbing in her veins; the scented 
fragrance of the summer evening stirred ob¬ 
scure emotions; she yielded her mouth, a wild 
rose in bloom. 

“I love you,” and from his voice she saw that 
he was really shaken. 

Suddenly she pulled away. “No, there is 
more to love. More than either of us has to 
give the other.” 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 39 


Then he had tried to batter down her will 
but found her suddenly ice. She had flirted 
rather openly with Foxy Lorimer for the rest 
of the evening. And yet—Patricia was 
nothing if not honest with herself—“I did en¬ 
joy that moment in his arms,” she had reflected 
as she sat in the window of her room before 
retiring. Lulled to sleep by the tender 
cadence of the sea murmuring musically on the 
shelving shore beneath, in her dreams she had 
seemed once more to hear, “I love you.” 

“Why, there’s the Valiant now with one of 
the dump scows.” Clifford’s voice recalled 
her to the present. He pointed to a red hulk 
off the port bow so heavily laden as scarcely to 
rock to the sea’s motion. “Let’s run along¬ 
side and watch them drop the stone.” 

Fifteen minutes brought them w r ithin hail¬ 
ing distance. After some shifting and man¬ 
euvering the crew started to knock out the 
pins, and the bottom of the scow, composed of 
heavy doors which when released swung down¬ 
wards, began to drop the load. The scowmen 
dashed about frenziedly, yelling in Italian, 
and reminding Patricia of a band of excited 
chimpanzees. It seemed a futile performance, 
dumping rocks into the sea. She wondered 


40 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 


how many thousand loads would be required 
before some signs appeared above the surface. 
This breakwater had been under construction 
by installments, as Congress appropriated the 
money, for a generation. One after another 
the bins emptied. The scow’s freeboard in¬ 
creased perceptibly with each load released. 

“That’s Gordon, I think, that chap with the 
gray cap.” Clifford pointed to a tall, loung¬ 
ing figure which evidently was in command. 
Patricia noted him with vague attention. As 
the final bin let go, a cry of derision went up. 
A man had been whipped overboard perhaps 
by the kick of a released chain. But some¬ 
thing was wrong. He did not strike out. 
The scow was fast drifting away from him. 
The man in the gray cap suddenly stripped 
off his coat and dove overboard. 

Simultaneously Patricia swung the tiller 
over and luffed. Clifford let go the jib hal¬ 
liards and they brought up alongside the res¬ 
cuer and his burden. It was Gordon and the 
scowman, the latter unconscious, apparently 
dead. They pulled the Italian aboard and 
Gordon climbed in soggily. 

“All right,” he yelled, turning to the tug 
and waving his arm toward the quarry which 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 41 


lay three miles down the coast. “We’ll take 
him ashore. Go ahead.” Addressing Pa¬ 
tricia, he said with a smile, “If you don’t 
mind we’ll run straight into Bellport. It’s 
only a mile and there’s something wrong with 
this man.” He turned to the scowman who 
lay inert and dripping, unresponsive to Clif¬ 
ford’s sketchy efforts to revive him. 

Gordon went briskly to work, loosened the 
man’s belt, turned him on his stomach and 
lifted him by the middle. A few jerks re¬ 
lieved him of the sea water he had swallowed. 
Then he began to compress and expand the 
lower ribs. He worked earnestly and with the 
quiet competence of a skilful surgeon. Pa¬ 
tricia, still at the helm, observed him interest¬ 
edly. So this was the new superintendent, this 
kind, finely drawn, thoughtful-looking man in 
his middle thirties about whom even in his 
soaked tweeds there hung the air of the stu¬ 
dent, and in whose clear gray eyes one saw, 
or seemed to see, an expression of frank 
innocence. 

“Not handsome in any orthodox sense,” was 
her silent comment. “But his face has distinc¬ 
tion. And the expression, such serenity and 
poise.” She felt superfluous, sitting steering 


42 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


while a tense struggle for a life went on before 
her. She was conscious of an aching desire, a 
sort of savage determination that the man 
should be brought back, as if by flinging her 
own will power into the scales the beam might 
be tipped. Plainly, however, Gordon was do¬ 
ing everything possible and although Clifford 
fluttered about making helpless motions, Pa¬ 
tricia sat quietly by the tiller. 

“He’s breathing, Mr. Gordon!” Clifford an¬ 
nounced excitedly, and Patricia exhaled a long 
breath. She had not realized how she had 
been holding it. Gordon, redoubling his ef¬ 
forts, began to work the man’s arms up and 
down. He looked puzzled at Clifford’s use of 
his name. 

“Why, hello, Keller!” he exclaimed heartily. 
“I didn’t recognize you in that duck hat and 
in the confusion. Queer coincidence, picking 
up one of your own men.” 

“Yes, and this is my sister.” 

Patricia laughed as she bowed with mock 
ceremony. “Your entrance was theatrical,” 
she remarked. But Gordon evidently had no 
small talk or thought the moment inapposite. 
He merely smiled and once more fell to work. 
The patient opened his eyes suddenly and sat 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 43 


up. The fresh southwest breeze was fast re¬ 
viving him and he began talking in Italian, 
finally relapsing into broken English as he 
got his bearings. 

“Madre di Dios! I mose adronna. No 
canna swimma. Getta job drilla.” 

“Surprising, isn’t it?” said Gordon. “A 
lot of those chaps who work on the water, 
deckhands and so on, can’t swim.” 

The man’s teeth began to chatter. “Put 
this over his shoulders,” and Patricia tossed 
him her sweater. 

“Well, Guiseppe, that was a close call.” 
Gordon’s voice rang vibrantly as though he 
were invoking sound to hearten the man. 
“Have to give you a job as driller.” The man 
understood and smiled wanly. The “bigga 
boss” was assuring him of a job ashore. He 
was alive after all. He would be a hero that 
evening at the boarding house. They were 
nearing the float and Patricia’s every nerve 
was concentrated upon avoiding collision with 
the yachts which lay moored thickly in front 
of the clubhouse. “Now!” she exclaimed. 
Clifford let go the halliards and down came the 
mainsail. The boat gradually lost way and 
barely nudged the float as it touched. 


44 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


“A pretty landing.” It was Gordon who 
had watched the maneuver interestedly. As 
she met his glance of commendation, Patricia 
realized that for the first time he had noted 
her as other than an automaton, so absorbed 
had he been in the struggle for the man’s life. 

“I’ll get a machine and drive this man out to 
the plant. Mighty lucky for him that you two 
were alongside.” Then after a silence, he 
added meditatively, “You know he was to all 
intents and purposes dead. What I’d like to 
know is, where was he till we brought him 
back?” He studied Guiseppe speculatively. 

Patricia shook hands cordially as he stepped 
ashore. They had known each other but 
thirty minutes but under conditions which 
seemed in some esoteric fashion to have created 
an old and tested bond. 

“I don’t know whether it’s one of the super¬ 
intendent’s duties to dive overboard at inter¬ 
vals but I think you did it with marked skill 
and competence,” she said with a laugh. She 
felt as though the episode demanded some ac¬ 
knowledgment. 

“Certainly. That’s on page 64 of the 
super’s manual.” It was Clifford. “May I 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 45 


come down to-morrow evening about that 
Trig?” 

“Yes. About eight o’clock.” Supporting 
Guiseppe who walked as yet but feebly, 
Gordon disappeared around the corner of the 
yacht club. Patricia smiled as they flapped 
dankly up the runway, their trousers hanging 
in sodden shapelessness. So close is comedy 
to tragedy. 

“What did you mean about Trig?” inquired 
Patricia as they talked over the affair on the 
long beat home. 

“He offered to coach me on it evenings. If 
I can get that out of the way in the fall, I’ll go 
in clear of any conditions. Don’t you think 
he’s a very decent chap?” 

“He has a good face,” said Patricia. 

The breeze lessened as the twilight peace 
descended. Patricia was stirred by the pen¬ 
sive beauty of the hour—the molten gold of 
the dying sun flooding the bay in glory, the 
pastel tints of the August afterglow, pink, 
lemon and mauve; Phantom Rock, a mirage 
of unearthly beauty swooning in opalescent 
haze; at last the rich sombre purple and indigo 
of the summer evening. 


46 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


“Won’t Mrs. Gordon find you in the way?” 
This after a long silence. 

“There isn’t any Mrs. Gordon. At least I 
haven’t heard of any. He boards not far from 
the quarry.” 


CHAPTER IV 


“Oh, no, you don’t mean that, Wellington. 
Your bark is worse than your bite. You 
wouldn’t be able to give the word to fire if you 
ever met those conditions. I don’t mean that 
you’re spoofing us but I think you’re spoofing 
yourself. Isn’t he, Miss Keller?” And 
Gordon’s laugh somehow robbed the first 
speaker’s words of all their significance. 

“Well, they ought to respect the law,” de¬ 
fended Wellington with an apologetic note in 
his voice. They had been discussing a strike 
in the coal fields which had led to violence. 
Wellington had advocated “shooting the strik¬ 
ers like dogs.” Patricia and he, idling along 
the shore road, had stopped at Gordon’s to 
pick up Clifford. They were sitting on the 
front porch. Patricia inhaled the heavy fra¬ 
grance of the honeysuckle borne to them in 
successive waves on the soft night air and 
wondered with vague irritation why they dis¬ 
cussed such jangling topics on so heavenly an 
evening. 


48 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

“I don’t believe he has the heart to kill a 
sparrow,” she interjected lazily, and then her 
thoughts returned to the de Polo incident. 

“Well, I guess I’m a kind of a wishy-washy 
sort of fellow,” concluded Gordon in a quizzi¬ 
cal drawl as he rapped the ashes out of his pipe 
on the porch rail. “But I’d hate like fury to 
give the word to shoot any of that irresponsible 
gang of highbinders we’ve got down the road. 
They’re just a bunch of children. I never 
handled Italians before. They’re a crowd of 
comedians; always have me laughing.” He 
chuckled at some recollection. 

“Keen, too,” he went on, “some of them. I 
was asking Tony Cellini this morning about 
old Parsons, government inspector for this 
district. He knew him down on the Goat 
Island job. He shrugged his shoulders dis¬ 
gustedly—‘Or woman, Meester Gordona,’ he 
assured me. ‘Drinka cuppa hot water every 
morning fore he eata.’ What you might call 
a complete characterization! You’d laugh to 
see some of the funny questions that I’m called 
upon to settle. You see, I’m not only the 
bigga boss but apparently magistrate, father 
confessor, and physician extraordinary to the 
flock. Signora Pucci consulted me to-day 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 49 


about medicine for her youngest’s stomach¬ 
ache and last week two of them demanded that 
I settle a theological dispute which had been 
raging in one of the boarding houses about the 
relative potency of two saints. And I was 
raised a Unitarian !” 

“But doesn’t it interfere with discipline?” 
suggested Clifford. “Getting as close to them 
as you do?” 

“That discipline idea is rather exploded you 
know in modern industry. We’re beginning 
to get the idea of leading rather than driving. 
And besides being more human, it pays better. 
Men will work much harder and more happily 
if moved by some better motive than fear. 
You see, you can’t say a man is this or that, 
pigeonhole him so easily. To a great extent 
you’ll find in a man what you expect to find. 
The qualities you’re looking for will respond 
to your attitude. I once knew a chap quite 
well who was a thief and swindler but although 
I often entrusted money to his care, he was 
always on the square with me.” 

“But it’s not infallible,” objected Patricia. 

“No, but it works in the majority of cases. 
Often enough to make it a good rule to follow 
in industry. Men put their heart into their 


50 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

work if they like and respect the boss. And 
there’s some quality about these wops that 
makes them particularly responsive, an in¬ 
genuous simplicity.” 

“My theory is that you’re that kind of 
manager by nature, Mr. Gordon,” challenged 
Patricia, “a leader rather than a driver. You 
get good results and then proceed to elaborate 
a theory to fit the facts. Isn’t that right?” 
she turned to Wellington. 

“I think it’s all bunk,” Wellington laughed. 
“But the point is, Gordon gets the stone out. 
There’s some magic in it. I suspect he’s quite 
mistaken in his analysis, but don’t disturb his 
dreams. It might interfere with his sub¬ 
conscious formula. And that works.” 

“Good-night, Father Gordon,” she called as 
they drove off. “I’ll come to your confession 
box when my sins weigh too heavily!” 

“A nice fellow, isn’t he?” Patricia’s tone 
was impersonal, as they drove home. 

“Yes, he is. But do you know he really 
believes all those theories of his—lives by them 
I mean?” Wellington’s tone implied that he 
expected his listener to be incredulous. 

“Yes?” 

“But you don’t know half of it. He’s a 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 51 


strange man. And he gets away with murder, 
even with me. I don’t know how he does it. 
Beneath that easy-going surface there’s a will 
of steel. I’m supposed to be his employer, 
you know, one of them anyway. The other 
day I gave him some instructions about an em¬ 
ployment policy. Told him to fire a few men 
just for the sake of example, keeping the rest 
worried and the morale good. ‘But that 
comes under personnel, Wellington,’ he in¬ 
formed me, ‘and by the terms of my contract 
I’m to have a free hand. I think your policy 
is mistaken, old man, and I’ll have to stick to 
my guns. If the men go, I’ll have to.’ And 
I let him get away with it,” Wellington 
laughed ruefully. “He was so blamed 
friendly and good-humored and had such an 
air of you-see-how-it-is old chap, that I just 
said, ‘Oh, have it your own way,’ and walked 
off. And yet I felt absolutely certain that if 
I didn’t give way, he’d do as he threatened. 
He wasn’t bluffing.” 

“In other words, his theory worked with 
you,” laughed Patricia. “He looked for 
ready acquiescence in his viewpoint, and 
that was what he met. I wonder if that isn’t 
the secret of these rare people whom one 


52 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

occasionally meets and whom everyone likes. 
They look for the best in everyone, find it and 
labor under the illusion that the world is filled 
with people of delightful personalities and 
noble characters.” 

“I never saw one of them get anywhere.” 

“Where do any of us get, I wonder? 
Aren’t we altogether too intent upon getting 
somewhere without first investigating the goal 
—deciding whether it’s worth getting to?” 
She paused as though contemplating her own 
future. “I haven’t much idea what it costs us 
to live, for example, the four of us, but I 
wouldn’t wonder if it came to forty or fifty 
thousand a year. It keeps Father on the 
jump, I imagine. Why wouldn’t we be just 
as happy in some pretty suburb? Or if we 
demand New York, in some less expensive 
setting? Are our lives really any richer be¬ 
cause we spend a lot?” 

“The simple life, eh? You’d soon weary of 
it. You’ve had the fleshpots too long. I was 
poor once; started poor. And I’ve no wish to 
experiment with it again.” He spoke with 
bitterness. 

“No, I mean comfort without the crass 
luxury and ostentation of New York, our 


PATRICIA S AWAKENING 53 


New York. It was Schwab, wasn’t it, who 
said that to buy everything worth having, one 
needed no more than fifteen thousand a year?” 

“Easy to say when you’ve Schwab’s millions. 
I’ve paid a price to get as far as I’ve got and 
I’m going to keep on.” 

Patricia looked at him in surprise. The 
smothered resentment of his tone implied that 
she was questioning the very corner-stone of 
his philosophy. “You’re a thorough material¬ 
ist, aren’t you?” 

“By temperament and intellectual convic¬ 
tion.” 

“It’s a pose,” she affirmed. “The real 
materialists are sentimentalists. They hide 
their inherent materialism under idealistic 
platitudes. They prate of patriotism when 
they’re thinking of profits—rant about loyalty 
while planning exploitation.” 

“Subtract the hypocrisy and you have me, a 
materialist,” he asserted. 

“And what am I?” 

“A much more obscure problem. A man’s 
mettle is frequently tested; his code constantly 
exposed both to himself and others. A 
woman, sheltered as you have been, doesn’t 
know what she is. Nor does anyone else.” 


54 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


They fell silent. Patricia was wondering 
what she was. What chords vibrated to the 
pull of this man’s strange cynical personality? 
And why, on the other hand, had something 
within her leaped to respond to the totally 
different philosophy implied by Gordon’s 
utterances? Was his idealism but disguised 
sentimentalism? Was all idealism that? No, 
apparently his philosophy was empirical, 
sprang spontaneously out of his life. 

“Why, here we are,” she exclaimed as Clif¬ 
ford pulled up at the hotel entrance. “In time 
for a few dances.” Wellington stepped from 
the tonneau and offered his arm. “No, it’s 
too warm. Let’s go down by the water.” It 
was with the salty dampness of the sea en¬ 
veloping them in its grateful coolness that she 
returned to the subject. 

“But your interest in me is only material— 
physical,” she protested. “You want me as a 
symbol of your success, to hang clothes and 
jewelry on and have men envy you because 
your wife is not altogether ugly. After that 
momentary satisfaction had worn off, you’d 
find me a bore.” 

“You mean you’d find me one. Damn it, 
Pat, you know I’m sincere. I want you. I 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 55 


need you. I want you more than I want any¬ 
thing in the world; more than success, more 
than men’s grudging respect. I don’t attempt 
to analyze it. But grant me honesty. It’s 
not vanity, not pride; it’s deeper. It’s an 
ache, a longing always with me. What I said 
to you the day we met sounds sophomoric now. 
You have ensnared me, whether deliberately 
or not.” Impulsively he grasped her hand 
and sought to pull her close. But although 
more than once since that first involuntary 
surrender she had yielded him her lips, to-night 
she resisted. 

“No, Dick,” and her voice was gentle. “I 
don’t question your sincerity. But it’s the 
future. You do pull me, in a way. But it 
might not outlast the honeymoon glamour. 
I don’t think you were intended to be a hus¬ 
band. I don’t think you’re capable of love— 
as I’ve sometimes dreamed of love. Nor, in 
all probability, am I. But at least I shall 
believe I’ve found the real thing when I give 
myself to a man. I may become the victim of 
an illusion but at any rate I’ll be a victim 
wholeheartedly. There have been happy 
marriages, idyllically happy, with constancy to 
the end. I can’t compromise. I’m going to 


56 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


gamble everything on that cast. Look at me. 
I was born for love. If I can’t find the jewel, 
I’ll at least refuse paste.” There was some¬ 
thing in her voice, in her eyes, which made 
Wellington release her hand and draw away. 
He lighted a cigarette and abruptly changed 
the subject. 


CHAPTER V 


A sea turn lent a penetrating chill to the eve¬ 
ning; so much so that the group had drifted 
inside to the billiard room. Patricia was play¬ 
ing Jack Ingersoll. Wellington and Madge 
Culver were criticizing their game with the 
condescension which always marks the view¬ 
point of those on the sidelines. Patricia 
characteristically was the best cue of the 
group. 

“The squadron is in,” remarked old Mr. 
Coburn, looking up from his paper and calling 
across the room. “Got into Bellport this 
afternoon.” 

“Oh, I’d love to see it! Those wonderful 
white ships and the jackies in those cute uni¬ 
forms, and the officers so smart in white duck!” 
It was Madge. “I’d love to marry a naval 
officer. One’s wedding would be so chic.” 

“Stevenson’s formula for matrimonial 
bliss,” remarked Ingersoll. “Marry a sea 
captain. ‘Absence—’ you know.” 

“The Tadpole's pulled out. Scraping her 
57 


58 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

for the regatta,” Patricia finished with a long 
run and snapped the counters over with de¬ 
cision. “Perhaps Ned Curtiss will take us 
down in the Sprite 

“Why don’t you commandeer the ValiantV* 
Wellington exhaled a cloud of smoke. “She’s 
free to-morrow.” 

“Do, Pat. I was never on a tug boat in my 
life. They always look so brave and sturdy 
when they’re pulling a big liner out into the 
stream.” Madge’s reaction to everything in 
life was suffused with feeling. 

“We might go out in the afternoon.” Pa¬ 
tricia looked at Wellington questioningly. 
She had the American respect for “business” 
and its obligations. 

“I’ll ’phone the quarry in the morning. 
Can’t go with you. I’ll be in Boston. But 
Captain Tucker will go along.” 

“And Mr. Gordon?” 

He shrugged his shoulders. “If you can 
induce him. I somehow can’t see him doing 
it.” 

“You’ll go, Jack.” 

“Notice, ladies and gentlemen. I’m not in¬ 
vited; I’m commanded. I obey! Poor old 
Jack Ingersoll, once a man, free and un- 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 59 


fettered. Now a squire of dames, a cicisbeo.” 
He had picked up the word in some of his 
desultory driftings through eighteenth cen¬ 
tury literature and delivered it with pride. A 
startled silence. 

“Sounds like my old college yell,” com¬ 
mented Wellington unpleasantly. “Warren’s 
Business College, Danville, Illinois, class of 
ninety-nine.” He was always snubbing the 
boy whose Harvard accent and graceful as¬ 
sumption of a life of unearned ease irritated 
him. But Ingersoll was so completely beneath 
Patricia’s sway that he accepted Wellington 
and attributed his occasional rudeness to his 
early background. 

“All right. And we’ll take Ted Brainerd, 
too. There! I’m out.” A dashingly exe¬ 
cuted masse had finished the game. 

“How unutterably romantic!” Madge 
peered into the quarry depths as the group 
skirted the edge in their path to the dock. 
“And all Italians, descendants of Leonardo, 
Michael Angelo, Giotto, Benvenuto.” 

“Mostly Ben’s,” remarked Jack Ingersoll. 
“He had as many children as Brigham 
Young.” 


60 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


“And the great cranes! like wonderful 
trained elephants! working so faithfully day 
after day!” 

Captain Tucker’s approach interrupted her 
rhapsody. A shambling, white-haired giant, 
stoop-shouldered, his waist gone, his voice 
husky with whisky, Captain Tucker had for 
many years been in charge of the company’s 
floating stock. His devotion to the Keller 
family was dog-like, and Patricia was his idol. 
“A faithful Newfoundland dog,” was Madge’s 
characterization. 

“Where’s Mr. Gordon? I was hoping we 
could induce him to come too.” 

“There’s the parson, down by the stiff-leg. 
See? Way out at the end of the dock, talking 
to Denton, the government inspector.” He 
spoke with an air of affectionate pride. 
“Sure, he’ll go if you ask him.” To him Pa¬ 
tricia’s word was law. 

“You like him, don’t you, Captain?” 

“Miss Patricia, that boy is white—all 
through. I been working with him down 
below, living with him; with him all the time. 
And I just naturally like him. He’s like a 
son to me.” The captain spoke with earnest 
conviction. 


PATRICIA S AWAKENING 61 


“But suppose he refuses? Can’t you get 
him down in the engine room on some pretext 
and cast off before he realizes it?” Tucker’s 
eyes sparkled. He loved a practical joke. 
It would not be the first he had played on 
Gordon. 

Gordon looked amazed at Patricia’s sug¬ 
gestion. “Look at me.” He glanced down 
at his dusty clothes and engineer’s boots. 
“The company expects me to stick to my job, 
not go galavanting off for a couple of hours 
with the summer boarders. I’m sorry.” 

“But I particularly wanted to ask you some¬ 
thing.” There was no coquetry in her look, 
merely serious purpose. 

“Oh, parson,” it was Captain Tucker call¬ 
ing, his white head protruding from the engine 
room like a hoary gopher’s from his prairie 
home. “Wish you’d look at this condenser.” 
Gordon stepped aboard and when, a couple of 
minutes later, he came up from the boat’s 
bowels, thirty feet of open water lay between 
him and the dock. There was a certain curi¬ 
osity in the glance which greeted Patricia as 
he joined in the laugh at his expense. She had 
jolted him out of his completely impersonal 
attitude. “I suppose that’s one of her father’s 


62 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


qualities,” he reflected. “That refusal to ac¬ 
cept ‘No.’ ” But what did she want of him? 

A little maneuvering on Patricia’s part and 
they were alone. Her eyes held a dream 
quality as she gazed pensively over the glitter¬ 
ing surface of the quiet sea, darkened here and 
there by light puffs to match the hue of her 
eyes. Although mid-August, here on the bay 
it was gratefully cool. They talked des¬ 
ultorily, with occasional silences. The placid 
deep seemed to impress its own mood of peace 
and calm content. 

“How comfortable he is,” thought Patricia. 
“I enjoy being silent with him.” And into 
her consciousness came a recollection of an 
utterance of Maeterlinck’s—something about 
silences and their nature, some hostile, some 
friendly, and how searching a test of deeply 
hidden, uncomprehending affinities and re¬ 
pulsions was silence. She had intended, per¬ 
haps, to cast a Circe-like spell over this St. 
Anthony in whose frank gaze she could read 
only simple friendliness, but Patricia’s per¬ 
ceptions were sensitive and confronted with 
his sincerity she could but similarly respond. 

She succeeded in extracting some informa¬ 
tion about his life. It was not, she felt, that 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 63 


he was wilfully reticent but that he was him¬ 
self uninterested in the subject. His father, 
it seemed, had been a doctor in a small city in 
New York and had expected him to follow the 
same profession. 

“I should think you’d have made a wonder¬ 
ful doctor,” she interjected. But he only 
shook his head. 

He had lost his mother when a small child, 
his father during his senior year at college, and 
he had no brothers or sisters. From college 
he had gone into engineering which had led 
him into scientific management and efficiency 
work. He had had a good deal of mining ex¬ 
perience but the Blake’s Point job had been 
his first contact with this field. Nothing that 
he divulged gave her the clue she sought— 
what elements in the crucible of his life had 
developed the attitude which he seemed to her 
to express? 

“I was thinking about what you said the 
other evening,” she said finally. “You’re a 
confirmed optimist, aren’t you? About life, 
I mean.” 

“I don’t know that I ever classified myself.” 
He seemed to be considering himself objec¬ 
tively as a novel experience. “But if you 


64 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

mean, do I think in the face of all the evidence 
to the contrary that life is worth while, I’ll 
answer yes. Of course, one’s conclusion is 
colored by his temperament plus circum¬ 
stance.” 

“No, there’s more to it.” She shook her 
head. “There’s a factor of intelligence, know¬ 
ing what is worth wanting. You are a pe¬ 
culiarly happy man; your expression betrays 
it. And I have an idea that it’s due to the 
different scale of values that I suspect you of 
having evolved.” 

“For example?” He looked puzzled. 

“You see you’re not conscious of it,” she 
went on. “Everyone feels qualities in you 
that you’re quite oblivious to. I don’t believe 
you’re ambitious in the American sense of 
ambition. You don’t crave power and money. 
Those aspirations spring from vanity which 
again you lack.” As the sun played about 
his brown hair, she noted that though in his 
thirties he was becoming a trifle gray. 

“No, money, much of it, is a bore,” he ad¬ 
mitted. “And power is an illusion—self- 
defeated. You cannot control men’s minds. 
Most multi-millionaires thought to compel the 
world’s respect. They earned only its hatred. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 65 

I used to want them though, when I was a 
youngster, but one learns. I suppose that’s 
what we’re here for. There’s only one path, 
I guess, and eventually, some time, some 
where, everyone follows it.” 

“Yes?” she hung on his words. 

“I mean the merging of self into the mass. 
Giving, not asking.” 

“But it’s imposs—” she stopped. Was this 
philosophy impossible? This man’s life 
seemed to contradict the assertion. Did it 
pay? His face was the answer. “It’s an old 
message,” she said. “And beautifully simple. 
Is it true? I wonder.” 

“Here they are. Come up in the bow, you 
folks. The squadron is just ahead, three 
points off the starboard keelson.” Jack ex¬ 
aggerated his ignorance of things nautical. 

They joined the group and soon found 
themselves weaving among the great battle¬ 
ships, lying so stolidly in the calm bay as to 
seem set on invisible piles rather than to be 
afloat. It was not visiting day and they con¬ 
tented themselves with a swift circuit of the 
flotilla, then swung back toward the plant, 
fetching it as pools of shadow, purple, pink 
and amethyst merged into the tints of the 


66 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


granite, began to form on the quarry floor. 

“Good-bye, Captain. Good-bye, Mr. Gor¬ 
don. Thank you, it was so inspiring! Those 
perfectly wonderful ships, lying there so 
patiently waiting the word to spring into 
action and to fly at the throat of any aggressor. 
And I adore the destroyers! Gaunt grey¬ 
hounds coursing the green wastes. I just 
loved it!” It was Madge of course. 

Jack fished out envelope and pencil and 
proffered them. 

“Well?” suspiciously. 

“You’ll want to embalm it, won’t you? 
‘Gaunt greyhounds coursing the green 
wastes’!” 

As they drove home they laughed about 
Gordon’s kidnapping. 

“I think he’s the darlingest thing!” affirmed 
Madge. “There’s something so clean and 
good about him and yet nothing of the milk¬ 
sop. You say he’s a bachelor? It’s a crime! 
When you see the husbands we have to put up 
with. And Captain Tucker! What a char¬ 
acter! I’m mad about these out-of-door men, 
Pat. They remind me of Jack Ingersoll 
—they’re so different,” with a withering look 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 67 


at the victim. “You ought to lure them up to 
the hotel.” 

But Patricia was silent. She was wonder¬ 
ing why she had felt so insistent a need to see 
this man, why she had been so resolved to get 
him on to the boat, and why she had insisted 
upon probing for his philosophy of life. Back 
at the hotel, she sought her room, lighted a 
cigarette and flung herself on the chaise 
longue. “I must be getting feeble-minded,” 
she mused with an impatient jerk. “Hunting 
up a quarry superintendent as a spiritual ad¬ 
viser.” 

“Did you meet that new man, Gordon?” her 
mother inquired at dinner. 

“Yes, he was on board. People seem to 
like him and he is nice but a bit insipid. I like 
a man to have more color; have a bit of devil 
in him.” 

Mrs. Keller looked pained. 

“You girls don’t know enough to appreciate 
a man when you see one. Lounge lizards are 
more in your line.” 

It was Clifford. 


CHAPTER VI 


Over the company store, a plain unpainted 
structure close to the water’s edge, was an 
office shared by Gordon and Tom Little, who 
served as timekeeper, paymaster and purchas¬ 
ing agent for the store. It was here that 
Gordon was approached one morning by a 
pudgy person with an indefinable aura sugges¬ 
tive of political prominence in a second rate 
suburb. 

His card read 

Wm. J. Hubbard New England Manager 

Robertson-Talbot Co. Contractors’ Supplies 

There was something in the greasy affability 
of his professionally cordial smile, something 
in the over-enthusiastic handshake which rang 
false. 

“Just dropped in to say hello, Mr. Gordon,” 
he announced in hearty accents, puffing the 
while from his climb up the stairs. “Elwell 

mailed in a nice order from you the other day, 
68 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 69 


I noticed. I’m not here for commercial 
reasons; just swinging around the circuit to 
keep in touch with our customers. I believe 
in the human contact, Mr. Gordon. There 
should be more of it in business; that warm 
human note is what lubricates the wheels of 
commerce; that’s what I’m always telling our 
salesmen.” He flicked his right hand as 
though driving home a point in a stump 
speech. 

Gordon hid his amusement beneath an ex¬ 
pression of interested acquiescence. 

“You see, Mr. Gordon, this is an age of in¬ 
dustry: mechanics, engineering—an automatic 
age, in fact. We do business by telephone, by 
wire, by letter, through lieutenants. The old 
human touch is disappearing. It’s all wrong, 
I say.” He leaned forward impressively. 
“That’s why I spend so much time on the road: 
to maintain that human bond, to strengthen 
the link that binds the house to the customer, 
to let our trade know that we are no soulless 
corporation but a warm pulsating human en¬ 
tity.” He mopped his brow as though the 
warmth of his sentiments were affecting his 
temperature. 

Gordon waited patiently for him to get to 


70 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

his point. It seemed obvious that beneath 
this cuttlefish camouflage there must be some 
motive. It was not, however, until the caller 
had been shown the quarry and they were back 
in the office that the object of his errand be¬ 
came clear. By this time Hubbard had 
reached the “old man” stage. “I tell you, old 
man, it’s impressive, what you’re doing here,” 
and so on. 

“Now about the James L. Bowker people. 
They must be getting about half your busi¬ 
ness. Good people, good house. I never 
believe in knocking a competitor but what, af¬ 
ter all, is the point of splitting the business? 
It’s simpler to deal with one; you get better 
service; it simplifies your accounts. You 
must be spending seven or eight thousand a 
month here, why not plump it?” 

“You know' why, Mr. Hubbard. Compe¬ 
tition keeps prices down.” 

“But, I assure you,” and he rambled on for 
some time until, lowering his voice and lean¬ 
ing forward confidentially, he said: “Of 
course, you understand that if you can see 
your way clear to swing all this business our 
way, you won’t be the loser. Five per cent 
goes to you personally, old chap.” He smiled 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 71 


triumphantly as though conferring a boon for 
which thanks were to be expected. Gordon 
gazed at him in open-mouthed astonishment. 
So this was the object of Hubbard’s call, this 
respectable aldermanic fellow with his prom¬ 
inent paunch and oily affability? 

“Where did you get the idea that we did 
business that way?” he remarked finally. 
“No, Mr. Hubbard, you’ve made a mistake.” 
The man stumbled out of his predicament as 
best he could. Lots of business done that way 
—one of the job’s perquisites—everybody un¬ 
derstands it—etc., etc.—the usual attempts at 
self-justification. As soon as he could grace¬ 
fully do so, he made his departure. 

That evening Gordon told Captain Tucker 
about the episode. 

“It’s strange,” he added, “but only last week 
the Bellport baker put a similar proposition 
up to me. I’ve been buying the men’s bread 
in Boston. Why does everyone suddenly 
assume that I’ve become a crook?” 

Tucker smoked in silence for awhile, his 
pipe wheezing huskily. Finally he removed 
his feet carefully from the porch rail. “Well, 
parson, ’twasn’t till the same thing happened 
to me twice that I tumbled. First ’twas up at 


72 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


Bennett’s spar yard at East Boston. They 
suggested that they bill the boom for fifty 
dollars more than it cost and slip me the differ¬ 
ence ; then in buying coal ’round at Hodge’s a 
similar proposition was put up. Those things 
happen now and again in this business but four 
times in three weeks is a queer coincidence. I 
tell you what I figure.” He lowered his voice 
and shook his finger impressively. “I think 
it’s a scheme of this feller, Wellington’s. 
He’s testing us all out for some reason or 
other. He persuades these people to make 
these propositions. 

“And what makes me think so is, I said to 
Ed Cook, Bennett’s foreman, I said, ‘Ed 
Cook, you ought to know me better than 
that. I’ve a right to punch your nose for 
suggesting it. I’ve a good mind to tell Mr. 
Keller and see that you never sell us another 
stick o’ timber.’ He looked pretty shame¬ 
faced and said, ‘Captain,’ he said, ‘I know 
you’re as square as a Dutchman’s head but 
don’t take it to heart. It didn’t mean any¬ 
thing. I was told to do it for a reason and to 
keep my mouth shut. I shouldn’t be spilling 
even this much.’ So I got to figuring it out 
that it’s a smart-Aleck scheme of Wellington’s 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 73 


to find out if we’re all right. It don’t sound 
to me like Mr. Keller, though of course Well¬ 
ington may have persuaded him to O. K. it. 
I don’t like it. What I mean is, a fellow 
that’s always suspecting other people of 
crooked work generally has a tricky streak 
himself. I don’t know why Mr. Keller ever 
tied up with Wellington and his crowd. I’m 
afraid he was pinched for money. I never did 
believe that four-eighty a ton was a safe figure 
on this job.” 

“Oh, I guess Wellington’s all right,” de¬ 
fended Gordon from the depths of a blue 
cloud. “Maybe he’s had bad luck with men 
and it’s made him suspicious. Though I will 
say, Captain, that though you’re a drunken 
scoundrel and I suspect a devil among the 
women, I should think any one could see you 
were honest.” 

“Drunken scoundrel, eh?” the captain 
laughed. “Well, parson, that’s the only thing 
I got against you. It don’t seem right some¬ 
how. Here I been working with you two 
years, living with you, closer than a brother, 
and you and I ain’t never been soused together. 
It don’t seem friendly. It’s because you were 
raised in the wrong part of the country. Yes, 


74 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

you’ll take a drink and sometimes two, and 
then you quit. What is it, parson? Can’t 
you handle it? I ain’t got a word to say to 
a fellow that can’t. I respect him for leaving 
it alone. But you will take two. Did you 
sign a two-drink pledge? Like a fellow I 
knew—” and Captain Tucker was off on one 
of his yarns of wild young days when he had 
more than once rounded the Horn. 

“I wonder if the captain’s theory is right?” 
Gordon reflected as he sat alone in his room 
later that evening. “And I wonder why this 
sudden attempt to rate us ethically?” It 
never entered his mind that these tests, if they 
were tests, were perhaps being applied with 
the idea of selecting men who were venal for 
a plan which demanded co-operation among 
such types. 

With a shrug he dismissed the matter from 
his mind and squatted before a little bookcase 
which, with his trunk, comprised his Lares and 
Penates, and glanced over the titles for a 
volume with which to pass the half hour before 
retiring. It was a rather oddly assorted range 
which met his eye and one which was illumina¬ 
tive of their possessor. A few volumes of con- 


PATRICIA S AWAKENING 75 


temporaneous English fiction, H. G. Wells 
particularly, Henry George’s “Progress and 
Poverty,” the Webbs, Tolstoi, Romain Rol- 
land, Bakunin, William James, Thoreau, 
Havelock Ellis, F. A. Lange, Hans Vai- 
hinger, Henry Lloyd, Stanley Hall: econom¬ 
ics, psychology and philosophy seemed to com¬ 
prise their owner’s chief interests. 

Selecting a volume of Jean Cristophe, 
Gordon lost himself in its pages until a heavy 
body was heard creaking up the stairs. It 
paused for a moment outside his door and a 
voice called crisply, “Mr. Gordon, you go to 
bed or you’ll hear from me. It’s ’leven o’clock 
and if you don’t get your sleep I’ll have a 
terrible time to get you out in the morning.” 
It was the Widow Hale, with whom he and 
Captain Tucker boarded. A motherly soul 
alone in the world, she had adopted Gordon on 
sight. 

“All right, Mrs. Hale,” he replied and in a 
short time he dropped off to sleep, lulled by 
the plaintive chirrup of the crickets which 
made melodious the soft, sweet-scented sum¬ 
mer night. 


CHAPTER VII 


“It’s good to get back to this part of the 
country,” exclaimed John Keller as he walked 
out upon the porch after breakfast. He in¬ 
haled the cool sea breeze hungrily. “It’s un¬ 
bearable on the Gulf Coast in summer.” 

Wellington had left the previous morning 
for New York but the two men had met in 
Boston and spent several hours in earnest con¬ 
sultation. It was a day upon which no stone 
was moved and the fact that Denton, the gov¬ 
ernment inspector, had not appeared at the 
quarry excited no particular comment. His 
presence was required only to make certain 
that the weighings were accurate and honest. 
So far as that goes, had it been known that 
Denton was in Boston and had returned upon 
the same train as Keller, it would have had no 
special significance. The results of Keller’s 
talk with his partner, however, were destined 
to bear immediate results. 

“Well, puss, going to drive me down this 
morning?” 


76 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 77 


“Oh, Dad, I’m glad you’re back! Of 
course I will.” Patricia, who had been parad¬ 
ing up and down the long veranda with him, 
clutched her father’s arm with convulsive af¬ 
fection. “But finish your cigar first.” 

He seated himself in an inviting rocking 
chair with a sigh of well being, Patricia perch¬ 
ing airily upon its arm. As she gently ran 
her fingers through his fast thinning hair one 
could almost hear him purr with contentment. 
From her babyhood the two had been lovers 
and now and again some wily aspirant had dis¬ 
covered that the surest road to Patricia’s heart 
was to be solid with her father. The Kellers’ 
marriage had been one of propinquity upon 
his part, policy upon hers. The glamour had 
hardly survived the honeymoon. But as both 
were blessed with good dispositions, they had 
adjusted themselves. Keller had become ab¬ 
sorbed in moneymaking; his wife, with her cool 
temperament, had been content to let her life 
be smothered in bridge, clothes and the triviali¬ 
ties which mark the careers of those who have 
leisure but lack the quality of mind to utilize 
it profitably. It was perhaps due in part to 
this that John Keller’s emotional life focussed 
so exclusively upon his daughter. As for Pa- 


78 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


tricia, from her cradle she had stretched her 
arms out confidingly to the square red face 
that beamed down upon her so adoringly. 

“I suppose you bossed things at the quarry 
while I was away,” he suggested jocularly as 
they spun through the fresh morning air. 

“I was down there last Thursday,” she said, 
deftly shifting gears as they breasted a steep 
pitch. And she told him about trapping 
Gordon on the tug. 

“What do you make of him? He’s been 
working for us nearly two years now but, as it 
happens, I haven’t been in very close contact 
with him. He always seems to me an im¬ 
practical kind of chap at heart but he certainly 
gets practical results. I mean he’s impractical 
about his own interests. You know we pay 
him only five thousand plus his bonus on ton¬ 
nage dumped, which adds another twenty-five 
hundred or so, and he’s worth twice that. Yet 
he’s never kicked. Guess if he were married 
his wife would jolly soon stir him up to de¬ 
mand more. But I suppose he salts half his 
pay as it is.” 

“Money means very little to him. I had 
quite a talk with him on the Valiant . He’s 
very nice but a terrible stick from a girl’s view- 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 79 

point. He’d never know whether you were 
wearing a Mother Hubbard or one of Paul 
Poiret’s triumphs. Clifford likes him tremen¬ 
dously. He goes down to his house three 
nights a week now for coaching in his Trig. I 
suspect he’s rather unusually well educated. 
I mean culturally as well as in his profession. 
Reads a lot and all that.” 

“Wonder if we couldn’t get him to move up 
to the hotel? I plan to push him ahead, you 
know. And I’d like to get him to feel his 
position more. He’s so blamed democratic— 
overdoes it. If he were up here with us, it 
might make a big difference. I’ve other 
reasons too. Of course, we’d make up the in¬ 
crease in his expenses. Wellington thinks it 
would be a good idea.” 

“I don’t think he’d like it,” Patricia was 
silent a moment as though considering the 
matter. “Still, if you put it on a business 
basis—must have him at hand for consultation, 
how can he refuse? I’d rush him a bit. Get 
him in the car, put it up to him as a temporary 
arrangement, pick up his duds and land him 
here. Then he can’t escape.” 

Her father looked at her reflectively. 

“You’re wasted, Pat, fooling away your life 


80 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

around summer hotels. You’re a tactician. 
God help the man you go after.” 

Gordon, however, proved unexpectedly 
amenable and, to Patricia’s surprise, appeared 
at table that evening in a dinner coat of per¬ 
fect fit. 

“Had to get some of these comedy clothes 
for a friend’s wedding last winter,” he ex¬ 
plained. “I was his best man. Hadn’t worn 
’em since my salad days.” 

Mrs. Keller, who had never met him before, 
was divided between seeking to maintain her 
pose of gracious patronage and her desire to 
hide her confusion at the fact that she had 
never heard the word “picaresque” which he 
used in jocular reference to himself. She 
thought at first that he was mispronouncing 
“picturesque.” But there was something 
about the man’s directness which could domi¬ 
nate even the atmosphere of the Tudor Arms 
and she soon capitulated to his simple cordi¬ 
ality. Clifford was beaming. He was seven¬ 
teen years old and something about Gordon 
had touched his imagination. He was inclined 
to idealize him and Patricia derived no little 
pleasure from quietly poking fun at him on 
that score. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 81 


Very quickly they fell into the routine of 
Gordon’s presence. The Kellers had a table 
which would seat six comfortably. Gordon 
fitted easily into Wellington’s place. Patricia 
formed the habit of driving the two men down 
to work in the morning, although the Kellers’ 
entourage that summer included a chauffeur 
and two cars. Keller often returned at noon, 
Gordon, of course, remaining all day. Three 
evenings weekly Gordon devoted an hour to 
tutoring Clifford. Most of the balance of his 
time was spent with Keller. The two men 
played billiards, spent long evenings discuss¬ 
ing engineering problems over their cigars. 
Imperceptibly a genuine affection began to 
form. And more and more Patricia forsook 
the ballroom, the motor jaunts to neigh¬ 
boring road houses, the tete-a-tetes in se¬ 
cluded corners, to form the third of this odd 
triangle. 

After years of flirtations and triumphs over 
rival beauties, it was refreshing to rest in the 
simple friendliness of this relation. Gordon, 
at this time, seemed to her like a brother except 
that there was the added stimulus of contact 
with a mind whose depths she had not plumbed. 
Gordon’s mind outranged hers and her 


82 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


father’s but in discussions between the two 
men, there was in the younger one’s attitude 
a tolerance, a reasonableness which prevented 
a discussion from degenerating into an argu¬ 
ment. The transitory pleasure of defeating 
an opponent in an argument seemed not to 
appeal to him. As he once remarked to Pa¬ 
tricia, “The trouble with so many people is 
that though they agree with another ninety- 
five per cent and disagree five per cent, all 
they can see is that five per cent. Arguments 
are so useless. You can’t tell a man what he 
doesn’t already know. Look at us, pitiful vic¬ 
tims of circumstance, hurtling madly through 
space on a ball of mud, poor shipwrecked 
souls. How can people be other than chari¬ 
table in the light of our common destiny—in¬ 
scrutable, ineluctable, incomprehensible?” 

They were drifting lazily before the fast 
falling evening breeze in the Tadpole. Gor¬ 
don’s utterance seemed to express the very 
spirit of the hour—serene quietude, timeless 
tranquillity. The man’s thought seemed of¬ 
ten to Patricia to lift her to higher levels of 
being, and the sensation was one of peace and 
rest. She found, too, that he stirred to life 
cells of her brain which had never “sprouted,” 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 83 


as she termed it. People remarked that she 
seemed subdued, less hoidenish. 

“What’s come over you, Pat?” complained 
Jack Ingersoll. “You’re losing your pep.” 

It was merely that she was adjusting herself 
to new vistas which contact with Gordon had 
opened up. Where once she had questioned 
the validity of the standards of the gay world 
she adorned, now she questioned their ethical 
basis. Was it right for people to devote 
themselves to a life of aimless pleasure¬ 
seeking in a world which, in some of her new¬ 
born moods, seemed to her to be calling for the 
efforts of every volunteer who could spare the 
time from the pressing personal duties which 
absorbed most people’s energies? 

In her relations with Gordon at this time, 
she was hardly conscious of herself as a woman 
but only as a human entity. With Wellington 
sex had been the overshadowing factor which 
colored all their contacts. With Gordon the 
emotional seemed dissipated before the strong 
illumination of the mental. She was inter¬ 
ested to note how her own particular set 
reacted to this unusual man with his imprac¬ 
ticable ideas. The girls, it seemed, thought 
him “nice but not interesting.” 


84 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

“He lacks color,” asserted Helen Westcott, 
a Pittsburgh girl who, so Jack Ingersoll said, 
felt it a personal insult if a man failed to make 
some affectionate demonstration upon their 
second meeting. 

“Do you know, Mr. Gordon would be good 
looking if he were only conscious of the fact?” 
Madge Culver confided one day. “But he is 
so lacking in—I don’t know just what,” she 
hesitated. “He’s so unassertive and carries 
himself so impersonally, somehow, like a man 
pondering some abstruse astronomical prob¬ 
lem! His looks just don’t register. And he 
obviously hasn’t the slightest taste in ties and 
haberdashery. Why don’t you make him 
more clothes-conscious, Pat?” 

Mrs. Keller, although she was becoming 
genuinely fond of their guest, felt that she 
ought to disapprove of him. “Mr. Gordon is 
such a strange man in some ways,” she con¬ 
fided to Mrs. Grimshaw. “You’d think that 
George, our waiter, were an old and valued 
friend, and as for the chauffeur, why, I’m 
afraid he’ll spoil him; he puts himself right on 
a level with servants. He doesn’t realize it. 
It’s just natural with him. But I think people 
should discriminate.” 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 85 


“Just another sign of the decadence of these 
days, Mrs. Keller,” and Mrs. Grimshaw 
gripped the copy of the North American Re¬ 
view which lay in her lap as though it were a 
symbol of salvation in a vale of vulgarity. 
“But at least his standards are not those of 
money and display and that is something in 
this materialistic age.” Mrs. Grimshaw re¬ 
sented the implied assumption of equality and 
familiarity in Mrs. Keller’s comment. 

Gordon was blissfully unconscious either of 
approval or criticism. To Patricia he ap¬ 
peared to be in many respects an unsophisti¬ 
cated child, so oblivious did he seem of the very 
existence of the various competing standards 
which prevailed at the Tudor Arms. Mrs. 
Grimshaw with her blood-and-culture yard¬ 
stick was quite as incomprehensible as Mrs. 
Keller with her more primitive measures. To 
him a person was neither master nor servant, 
intellectual nor ignorant. He was merely an¬ 
other human soul, to be welcomed if kindly and 
generous, to be borne patiently and tolerantly 
if otherwise. He never discussed personali¬ 
ties she discovered, not because of any con¬ 
victions regarding it but because ideas seemed 
to him so much more worth talking about. 


86 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


As a result of his faculty of bringing out the 
best in everyone he met, he was popular. 
Even Mrs. Grimshaw appeared to derive some 
benefit from contact with him and always 
made it a point to glance over from her ad¬ 
jacent table at dinner to say, “Good-evening, 
Mr. Gordon.” 

“That frozen-faced old dowager,” grumbled 
Clifford. 


CHAPTER VIII 


August’s opulent splendor merged into the 
blue-and-gold glory of September’s sunlit 
days. Here and there a maple flung a 
crimson banner to the breeze, mute symbol of 
surrender to autumn’s advancing hosts. The 
shrill sibilance of the locust’s note was heard 
no more; the gentle chirrup of crickets 
sounded through the twilight’s dusky still¬ 
ness. 

It was on a Sunday afternoon in mid- 
September that Patricia learned the reason 
for Gordon’s easy acquiescence in the removal 
to the hotel. The air held a hint of autumn, 
and lured by the radiant beauty of the day 
they had struck inland for a brisk walk over 
field and upland. 

“I’ve been checking up on a quaint, ironical 
book,” he confessed. “ ‘The Theory of the 
Leisure Class,’ by Veblen. This has been my 
first close contact with a life quite so aimless, 
quite so frankly devoted to pleasure only.” 

“And your conclusion?” 

87 


88 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

“I suppose it’s all true enough—what he 
says: that ostentation seems to be the domi¬ 
nating motive after the essentials, food, cloth¬ 
ing and shelter are ensured. The desire to 
accentuate one’s superiority to the mass. But 
after all, you can’t generalize. I don’t sup¬ 
pose that the wealthy are any different at 
bottom from those in moderate circumstances 
or the poor. Their lives are certainly more 
futile, rather lacking in dignity, but I suppose 
that most people would live as the wealthy do 
if they could. In other words, money means 
man liberated, man giving material form to his 
vision of happiness.” 

“But does he find it—happiness?” 

“No, obviously not. The younger people 
seem happy. It doesn’t appear to last. But 
what an absurd setting for sociology. Look 
at that blue jay!” he broke off unexpectedly. 
“The blue of your eyes.” 

“I’d as soon expect a compliment, if it is one, 
from Clifford.” She looked at him in sur¬ 
prise. “You’re not notably gallant.” 

“Is it a compliment? Do you want compli¬ 
ments? I merely happened to observe it.” 

She saw that he meant it. “What a man! 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 89 


I hope you never marry. Your wife might 
appear in a Paquin gown looking like Helen 
of Troy and it would be wasted on you. 
You’re just the same with men as with women. 
I don’t believe you’ve ever kissed a woman.” 
She spoke in a tone of semi-humorous despair. 

“No, I never did.” He laughed. There 
was neither apology nor pride in his voice. 
He might have been saying that he’d never 
been in an airplane or played squash. They 
were climbing a wall but Patricia stopped in 
mid-transit and subsided on the top. She sur¬ 
veyed him at first incredulously, then admir¬ 
ingly. “In this day and age!” she exclaimed. 
“You’re not a man, you’re a plesiosaurus or 
some other extinct anachronism.” 

“Most of my life has been spent in the 
wilds,” he added seeing that some explanation 
was expected. 

“Then it’s not against your code, or religion, 
or ethics, or anything?” 

He laughed again delightedly. “Bless you, 
no. Lack of opportunity, I fear.” 

A flash of deviltry lit her eyes. “Well— 
you’ve got one now, haven’t you?” He was 
too unsophisticated to know that the warm 


90 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


kiss she bestowed full upon his lips betrayed 
experience; that kissing like everything else de¬ 
mands practice. 

“Fifteen years wasted!” he exclaimed in 
comic regret as they walked on. “But then, 
that’s not necessarily true. I suppose they 
vary greatly depending upon the parties in¬ 
volved. Yours was worth waiting for.” 

“You’re progressing,” she conceded. 
“Some girl some day will hate me for a hussy 
for that—for she’ll ask you, you know. Oh, 
there’s a maple with some red leaves! 
Autumn is here!” There was no more talk of 
kissing. But the overtones of the incident 
re-echoed through their afternoon. Patricia 
sparkled, ran madly after a rabbit which they 
surprised beneath a hedgerow, laughed gaily 
at her ignominious defeat in the race. Then 
as they sat by a quiet brook, Gordon pulling 
meditatively at his briar, she turned pensive. 

“I love autumn. It makes me so sad.” 
Her eyes were filled with a tender melancholy. 
“George Moore is deliciously sentimental 
about it. You’ve never read Moore? No. 
He’s not your style. I’m glad. For some 
reason I recall a rhapsody of his about the 
French word suranne —means yester-year. 


\ 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 91 

Isn’t it a beautiful word? Suranne” she re¬ 
peated it lingeringly. “He says a sorrow 
clings about it. It conveys a sense of autumn, 
of the iong decline of roses.’ It means more 
to us women, those of us who have beauty. 
For I am beautiful.” She turned to him for 
confirmation. He nodded, smiling amusedly 
at her childlike naivete. 

“Rut I won’t be always. I am like that 
birch shimmering there in its gracious gar¬ 
ments of green. But for how long? Soon it 
will be bare and gaunt. I am twenty-five. 
In a few years I will be suranne —warming 
myself by the embers of memories. Nothing 
can make up to a woman for the glory of those 
vanished years. Unless—perhaps—love, an 
undying love. And that is illusion, a dream 
cherished in so many hearts, realized in so few 
lives. I wonder if in any? 

“Music must die, she thought, but in its dying 
Leaves wonder on soft air. Love must perish— 
And that is tragedy. The ghostly moonlight 
Is blown across the darkness and drifts away. 
Petals are blown, and the red sun drops to water.” 

She broke off. “I would rather marry a 
man I hated than to marry one I loved and 


92 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


then see that love die. For it always dies, 
even when they give all to love as some have 
done. Sacrifice position, money, honor— 
everything. Even then the flame finally 
flickers and is gone.” She was silent, her eyes 
misty. 

“Wasn’t that good?” she queried after a 
moment. “Madge would have loved it! 
That’s what autumn does to me.” 

Gordon started. “You little devil!” he ex¬ 
claimed. “I thought you meant it. You 
were pulling at my heartstrings—as at the 
theatre when the violins throb softly during 
the pathetic passages. And you were acting.” 

“I wasn’t. Was I? No. I couldn’t have 
been. I don’t know.” She made a gesture 
of helplessness and sprang to her feet. 

“Let’s walk on and on,” she urged, “across 
the fields and through the woodlands. See 
how the sun bathes that elm in glimmering 
green radiance—that field of goldenrod and 
purple asters! It’s wonderful to get out this 
way far from the roads. I wish they’d never 
invented automobiles. I had no idea of the 
beauty of this countryside, the sweet fragrance 
of it.” She grasped a handful of tansy, 
crushed it and made him inhale it from her 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 93 


pink palm. “New England is gorgeous. It 
has a crab-apple flavor, an intimate charm. 
In driving about New York I can always tell 
when we cross from Westchester into 
Connecticut/’ 

Like two children they rambled through the 
golden September sunshine. To Gordon it 
seemed that the happiness of the scene had 
entered into his very fibre. He felt a sort of 
muted ecstasy as though the girl’s kiss had 
tapped unsuspected emotions, warm and vi¬ 
brant, which were transmuted by the serene 
autumnal beauty of the afternoon with its 
touch of melancholy into a sense of quiet and 
immutable well being. It was dusk, musical 
with the plaintive cadence of crickets and bear¬ 
ing in its fragrant breath the faintest fore¬ 
taste of October’s chill, before they glimpsed 
through the trees the yellow splashes which 
marked the hotel. Before they rounded the 
curve which would expose them to view, 
Gordon stopped suddenly. 

“Kiss me again,” he demanded, and sought 
to draw her to him. She relaxed against him. 
It seemed to him that their bodies were kissing. 
But she refused her lips. 

“No,” she pleaded, all her audacity melted 


94 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 


into a tender, breathless appeal. “It was 
wonderful. More than you know perhaps. 
We’re not ready for another—yet. I didn’t 
know what a kiss could mean. I won’t be 
cheap with them again—even with you.” 


CHAPTER IX 


There were no more rambles that autumn, 
as the next day the Kellers left for New York. 

It was a relief to Gordon to return to Bell- 
port. Autumn’s advent spelled high winds, 
gales, factors of vital import where floating 
stock is concerned. He felt more at ease at 
Mrs. Hale’s but a half mile from the quarry. 
His days were filled with varied duties, but 
often in the solitude of his room he found him¬ 
self reverting to that last afternoon with Pa¬ 
tricia. It was not the episode which so much 
surprised him; he was sufficiently familiar with 
the tone of Patricia’s set to appraise it as a 
trifling occurrence of no particular signifi¬ 
cance. But its aftermath, the echoing over¬ 
tones which reverberated so inexplicably in his 
memory; this phenomenon defied analysis. 

Gordon was no tight-lipped ascetic. He 
had suggested environment as a reason for the 
emotional emptiness of his life up to that time 
and this was in fact the correct explanation. 
Few there are but that at some high moment 


96 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 


have glimpsed the eternal truth that beyond 
the horizon lie limitless possibilities of growth 
and that love will be found on the heights to 
which each may aspire. 

Had Gordon’s lines lain among attractive 
women, he would perhaps long before this time 
have known that meretricious warmth, that 
brassy glow which springs from those per¬ 
functory counterfeits of love we call flirta¬ 
tions. This, he argued, was the reason for 
the haunting insistence of the image of a 
charming presence, blonde yet with all the 
vivid assertion of a flame-like brunette; firm 
rounded chin, full lips parted in a gay laugh, 
nose the faintest bit retrousse . . . the por¬ 
trait shot through and vibrant with the molten 
glamour of gold—her hair. 

Unaccustomed to introspection and annoyed 
by its symptoms, he sought impatiently to 
exorcise the vision. He had not quite lost the 
power “to wonder.” And what is love? he 
pondered; this tyrannical emotion faintly im¬ 
agined by millions, disclosed in its full consum¬ 
ing power to but few; tolerated though tacitly 
condemned by the world’s religions, rejected 
as a cruel hoax by the disillusionized, spring¬ 
ing evidently from mere blind instinct and yet 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 97 


flowering so often into beauty in its most ex¬ 
alted manifestation, poems of supernal power, 
songs of deathless glory. 

It seemed clear that by some mysterious 
alchemy the common stuff of sex was, though 
rarely, transmuted into the gold of love, love 
infinitely tender, eternally loyal, triumphant 
over time and circumstance. He wondered 
whence sprang the quiet assurance that this 
was truth; wondered too why he found the sub¬ 
ject so interesting, even stimulating. That 
another’s mind was in contact with his, send¬ 
ing messages through the involuntary wire¬ 
less of thought, this fantastic conception never 
assailed him. 

The work went forward briskly. Early in 
October he received the welcome news from 
New York that additional cranes and the com¬ 
pressor he had requested would be forthcom¬ 
ing. During the summer they had felt the 
pinch of limited capital. 

“Guess the September check must have put 
the old man on Easy Street,” remarked Cap¬ 
tain Tucker. “Let’s see—” he began figuring 
on the back of an envelope which lay on Gor¬ 
don’s desk. Denton, the government in¬ 
spector, sat skimming the morning paper. 


98 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

Gordon was pulling comfortably at his pipe. 
“Must’er come close to sixty thousand,” he 
concluded. 

Denton was a lean, little man, his head bald- 
ish, a fact he sought to disguise by a studied 
method of combing his hair. He glanced at 
Tucker sharply over the top of his paper, 
opened his mouth to speak but apparently re¬ 
considering, remained silent. They fell to 
discussing the weather probabilities for the 
coming winter. 

“It’s going to close in early and be a hard 
winter,” asserted the captain positively. “All 
the experts say so—I mean the nature sharks 
that study the weight of the pelts, the food laid 
up by the animals, the bird flights and so on. 
And I’ve never known ’em to fail. I bet we’ll 
have to close down before Christmas. It 
ain’t as though we had a good harbor here. 
I never had to handle scows in such a place.” 

October’s flame burned with fierce and de¬ 
spairing passion to die suddenly, extinguished 
in the dull russets and browns of November’s 
sad resignation. Early in December a north¬ 
easter began to kick up a vicious sea. One 
scow lay snugly sheltered by the dock; there 
was not room to bring the other alongside. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 99 


She lay pitching wildly some fifty yards off 
the end of the dock. A telephone message 
from Hereford, the fishing center which lay 
twelve miles down the coast, reported a red 
pennant displayed above a square red flag with 
a black center on the government station. At 
three o’clock a moderate gale, by six it had 
increased to sixty miles an hour, a whole gale 
in technical parlance. A full head of steam 
was kept up in the Valiant . As Gordon 
fought his way down the dock, he discovered 
that the wind was literally blinding. It blew 
his eyelashes together whenever he faced its 
full power. At half-past six they cast off; 
Captain Tucker and Gordon in the pilot house 
with the taciturn Swede at the wheel. 

“If she ain’t dragging now she will be pretty 
damn quick,” declared Tucker, yelling to 
make himself heard above the drumming of 
the gale; “and then it will be too late to pull 
her out. We’d a damn sight better take a 
chance in the open sea. What a hell of a place 
to be handling scows in weather like this. 
There’s sixty thousand dollars may be kindlin’ 
wood in twenty minutes. By God, I believe 
she’s dragging!” His voice rose to a wild 
shout. 


100 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

The tug rolled and yawed, rails under. As 
she rounded to under the lee of the scow, it 
seemed as though she’d roll under. The scow 
was empty, a good and bad feature. It gave 
her more freeboard but it also offered the 
wind more purchase. The gale seemed to tear 
and wrench at her with the vindictive concen¬ 
trated fury of a terrier killing a rat. Hawsers 
were made fast. The Valiant drove ahead. 
The lifting of the anchor synchronized with 
the tightening of the cables. Could the Val¬ 
iant pull her off the lee shore, fanged with 
cruel teeth of granite? No one knew. There 
was no possible means of forecasting. Every 
nerve and muscle in Gordon’s body was 
stretched as taut as the tow line. He felt as 
though he were pulling the scow. The Swede 
shifted his cud of tobacco thoughtfully and 
spun the spokes. 

“Dirdy night for sailor faller,” he observed 
mildly. Captain Tucker burst into a roar of 
laughter, uncontrollable, hysterical. 

“You said it, Cap’n, a hell of a damned dirty 
night!” he agreed vociferously. For five min¬ 
utes they seemed motionless, the tremendous 
power of the mighty engines foiled by the 
gale. The propellers spun impotently. Then 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 101 


mercifully the wind lessened for a moment. 
Using the shore lights as a gauge they saw that 
they were gaining. 

“Py damn, I tought she’d laid down.” It 
was Sorenson. He was elated. The Valiant 
to him was a live thing and she had proved 
loyal. Gordon drew a long breath. Captain 
Tucker sat down suddenly, weakly. He was 
getting old he felt for such moments. Upon 
him had rested the entire responsibility of the 
decision. 

Soon they were lost in the black gloom of 
the Atlantic. Twenty-four hours later they 
lurched drunkenly into Hereford harbor. 
Part of the scow’s deckhouse had been torn 
away. The tug’s port rail had disappeared. 
But no lives were lost. The damage was 
trifling. They pulled the scow into its winter 
berth and Captain Tucker and Gordon, 
haggard and sleepless, drove to the quarry. 
The paper called it the worst storm for eleven 
years. 

Gordon called up Keller in New York and 
next day the men were paid off and the quarry 
closed down. Three days later Gordon and 
Tucker boarded the train for the city. The 
captain was slated for the Gulf Coast job; 


102 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

Gordon suspected that he would be retained in 
New York, probably for the Long Island con¬ 
tract which involved dredging the Sound 
channel and pumping the mud inland to con¬ 
vert mud flats into factory sites. He 
wondered vaguely why when he alighted at 
the Grand Central he should glow at a thought 
which occurred to him. He was in the same 
city with Patricia. 


CHAPTER X 

Although he had often passed throhgh New 
York, Gordon had never before lived there. 
Upon breaking into the routine of his winter 
duties, he found the work far from confining. 
He was supposed to go to Flushing daily, 
spend a couple of hours on the job to check 
up its progress; the balance of his time was 
consumed in the Keller Company’s offices on 
Fortieth Street just off Fifth Avenue. . . . 
He found the city endlessly interesting; vi¬ 
brant—stimulating. A room in a Madison 
Avenue house served his simple requirements. 
At the Engineers’ where he usually lunched 
he ran into several old friends. 

“Mrs. Keller told me to be sure to bring you 
home to dinner to-night. If you’ve nothing 
better to do, we’ll go right up from here. 
That suit is all right. They seldom get me 
into those fool clothes except when we’re 
living at some hotel or other.” Keller was the 
typical American business man in his frank 

103 


104 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


admission of philosophically borne feminine 
domination in matters social. 

As they entered the East Seventieth Street 
house, Gordon wondered if Patricia had in¬ 
stigated the invitation. He found her alone 
in the library, a sombre room, richly furnished, 
and witA its leather-backed volumes, heavily 
upholstered chairs and table illumination 
giving an effect of mellow and sumptuous re¬ 
pose. A cynic might have reflected that the 
Keller family seemed to be strangely un¬ 
familiar with the contents of their own book 
shelves, but to Gordon occurred no thought of 
criticism on that score. He had no taint of 
intellectual snobbery. 

“I’m so glad you could come.” She gave 
him a warm hand clasp. “Sit there by the 
fire where the light won’t bother you.” 

“How beautiful you are in that frock.” 
He said it with simple sincerity. 

Her black chiffon dinner gown, deceptively 
simple, with a line which bespoke a master 
hand, interpreted her blonde charm seduc¬ 
tively. Bathed in the soft warm glow of the 
flames, she had never to Gordon seemed more 
radiant. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 105 


“The second compliment you ever paid me! 
And the first wasn’t really one.” 

She seemed to him in this background older, 
more dignified, less accessible. He wondered 
how he could ever have claimed her lips, this 
alluring woman with her air of metropolitan 
sophistication. 

“Tell me about the work. And about the 
scow in the storm. Captain Tucker told 
father he was so grateful that you were with 
him. It gave him moral courage, he said. 
Really it wasn’t in the least your duty.” 

Gordon painted the picture in graphic 
strokes. “Come to think of it, it was rather 
a thriller, at least in contrast to this New York 
setting with its air of security, its complete in¬ 
sulation against the primal forces.” 

She laughed gaily at his humorous twist in 
describing the phlegmatic Swede’s reactions. 
“ ‘Dirdy night for sailor faller,’ ” she repeated 
with unction. “I can see him with that un¬ 
shakable Scandinavian aplomb! That was 
one reason I told father to be sure to corral 
you,” she added. “I wanted to hear all about 
it.” 

So it was Patricia, he reflected. 


106 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 


“I suppose you’re having a wonderful 
winter—dances, theatres? Will you go 
South?” 

“Time is taking its toll, I fear. It all seems 
to be losing its zest. I must be getting into 
the sere and yellow for I’m really beginning to 
develop almost human intelligence; reading a 
good bit, and much better stuff than I used 
to.” With her daintily shod toe she stirred 
a stack of periodicals which lay on the table’s 
undershelf. He saw that they were copies of 
a recently founded liberal weekly of some in¬ 
tellectual pretensions. 

“And I’ve been going to some lectures, very 
illuminating to me, on sociology and econom¬ 
ics. I’ll become a blue stocking if I’m not 
careful! But seriously, I’m showing some 
faint signs of developing a social conscience. 
I’m questioning, probing, challenging. I 
won’t bother you with my theories; you’ll 
assume, justly enough, that they’re merely 
diluted versions of the conclusions of better 
brains. Anyway—society bores me, phi¬ 
landering men making the same stale old 
moves; jazz, drinks, bridge, wearisome 
attempts at wit and repartee. So I’m 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 107 


gradually pulling out of it all. I wonder that 

I . . .” 

“Good-evening, Mr. Gordon.” Mrs. Kel¬ 
ler, impressive and obviously expensive in her 
burgundy frock, swept into the room. 

After dinner, a rather elaborate function, 
the perfection of which Mrs. Keller reflected 
was wasted upon their guest, they settled 
themselves in the drawing room, a chilling, 
professionally decorated interior in what 
Keller facetiously termed Louis Kahn’s period. 
A half hour’s desultory talk and Keller ex¬ 
cused himself. “Have to see a man at the 
club,” he explained. 

Patricia took the opportunity to carry 
Gordon off to the billiard room on the top 
floor. “Oh, let’s not play. What a con¬ 
fession of empty-mindedness, all these games 
that people play! Surely you and I are in¬ 
teresting enough to each other to enjoy talk¬ 
ing. Or ... do I bore you?” She said it 
with an air of grave inquiry. 

“No,” Gordon replied, speaking deliber¬ 
ately. “You know I like to be with you. 
But there is more behind it than ideas. We 
rest each other—and in each other.” 


108 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 


He stopped, surprised at his own words. 
There was something involuntary in his utter¬ 
ance, as though he were speaking from his sub¬ 
conscious. Patricia looked startled as she 
sat, strangely fragile and ethereal, in the ca¬ 
pacious depths of a huge wing-backed chair. 
It was her complete recognition of the truth 
of his assertion which had amazed her. It 
puzzled her because of its possible impli¬ 
cations. For a fantastic moment, she saw this 
man as her mate, her destiny irrevocably 
riveted to his—then with a silent laugh at her 
own absurdity, dismissed it. It was too in¬ 
credible. 

It was not Gordon’s obscurity which ren¬ 
dered him so ineligible. Patricia was not a 
snob; her perceptions were keen enough and 
her standards high enough for her to entertain 
a genuine respect for his character and 
capacity. But he was so dissimilar to her 
imaginary portrait of the man who would one 
day compel her capitulation. The magnifi¬ 
cent example of young America, his person¬ 
ality vibrant with power, his position one of 
conspicuous achievement, his manner charm¬ 
ing, magnetic, irresistible; a man with the 
strength of a Gladstone, the charm of Sir 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 109 


Philip Sidney, the poise of a Chesterfield; this 
ideal creation bore little resemblance to the 
unassuming Gordon. His attack would be 
swift and irresistible. He would sweep her 
off her feet like a Lochinvar. Millions of 
women finally accepted sorry compromises but 
Patricia, backed by beauty, brains and John 
Keller’s money, was under no such necessity. 

“To one who thinks, life is a comedy; to one 
who feels, a tragedy,” is an aphorism the truth 
of which depends entirely upon the individual. 
Most lives are tragic and in no relation more 
than in that of love. No marriage colored by 
worldly motives was ever happy; swinishly 
content, perhaps, but not happy. But though 
the ignoble inevitably fail, the noble unfortu¬ 
nately do not always succeed. How many a 
gallant pair, following Emerson’s dictum, 
“Give all to love,” has nevertheless failed. 
Often more completely and disastrously than 
the timorous and politic bargainers with 
passion. 

Patricia knew intuitively that her entire life 
hinged completely on love; denied it she would 
be able to salvage little from the wreckage of 
her dreams; granted it she could face any 
bludgeoning of chance with gay courage. 


110 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


And others sensed this as the keynote of her 
nature. It was revealed in the warm fullness 
of her mouth, the rounded loveliness of her 
body; she seemed like an expanding flower 
awaiting the kiss of the sun god to burst into 
radiant bloom. 

But what Patricia did not realize is that in 
women bom for love there are two loves which 
must be perfectly fused, the primitive love 
which craves impetuous ardor and dominating 
mastery, and the more spiritual love which 
seeks tenderness, fidelity, understanding and 
complete sympathy. Her dream picture of 
her lover was suffused with the passion which 
sprang from the former emotion as well as by 
the standards derived from her environment 
and the romantic fiction of her girlhood. 

“We rest each other, and in each other,” 
Gordon had said. 

“Yes,” she replied at length after a pal¬ 
pitant pause. “And now that I’m becoming 
more serious minded I’d appreciate it most 
awfully if you’d talk to me about the ideas 
that really interest you; not talk down to me. 
I think you’re very wise, you know.” She 
laughed. 

“ ‘And still the wonder grew,’ ” quoted 


PATRICIA S AWAKENING 111 


Gordon. “No, I’m not very wise and I warn 
you beforehand that you’ll get very little satis¬ 
faction from me. I’ve a lot of hopelessly ir¬ 
reconcilable data in my head, picked up from 
years of desultory poking about.” He went 
on to tell her something about his conclusions. 

Gordon was widely read in philosophy. 
But to induce him to yield up his findings was, 
as Patricia discovered, not easy. He had a 
morbid fear of appearing oracular, of the 
pedagogic pose, and required occasional 
proddings to keep him talking upon this, to 
her, profoundly interesting subject. 

“Why, it’s nearly midnight.” Gordon 
glanced at his watch in stark amazement and 
sprang to his feet. 

“You’ll come again,” she urged. 

He scrutinized her to see if it were not per¬ 
functory and, reading his thought, she said, 
“Next Thursday?” 

“If you really want me.” 


CHAPTER XI 


Patricia had said that she was developing 
some signs of a social conscience. Gordon 
heard the story in the bus on their way down 
town Thursday evening. Barbara Moore, a 
friend of Patricia’s, had run down a youngster 
when driving through Central Park at the 
speed limit. He was but slightly hurt; laid 
up for only a couple of weeks. Barbara, how¬ 
ever, had felt her responsibility sufficiently to 
seek out the address supplied by the hospital 
authorities and, accompanied by Patricia, 
make inquiries regarding the patient’s prog¬ 
ress. 

“It was incredible,” Patricia asserted in¬ 
dignantly, “the way that family lived, packed 
into two filthy little dens which opened on a 
malodorous light well. I don’t know why 
they keep on living. It wasn’t drink, nor dope 
nor laziness nor anything but just circum¬ 
stance. The father was a garment worker out 
of work on account of a lock-out; the eldest 
boy earned fifteen dollars a week; the mother 
112 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 113 


took in work, some kind of piece work on 
men’s clothes; the other two children were too 
young to count. 

“Barbara and I got busy and we’ve pulled 
them up several degrees. The father has a 
better job that Mr. Moore got him and they’ve 
moved into more decent quarters. The family 
is ignorant, yes. But no more ignorant than 
I am, opportunity considered. As a matter 
of fact, I doubt if as an economic factor I’d be 
worth more than twenty-five dollars a week 
and then only by capitalizing whatever advan¬ 
tages I may have as regards looks. I might 
be a model in a cloak and suit house. There 
are hundreds of thousands in this city with liv¬ 
ing standards like the Lefkowitzs’. I know 
that there is some basic injustice involved and 
I want to find out where. That’s why I’m 
dragging you to this lecture to-night.” 

They found the hall near Union Square well 
filled. The audience was principally Jewish 
with a sprinkling of Irish and Italian together 
with a few Americans of the original Anglo- 
Saxon stock. Before the speakers appeared, 
every seat was taken and many were standing 
in the rear. It was a typical New York prole¬ 
tarian gathering. Gordon observed the faces 


114 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

with intense interest. As a result of convic¬ 
tions arrived at from his reading he was in 
sympathy with their aims; as a practical ex¬ 
ecutive he seriously questioned their methods. 
These people believed that could the profit 
system be destroyed and, in their sonorous 
phrase, “co-operative ownership and adminis¬ 
tration of the nation’s means of production, 
distribution and exchange” assured, the 
millennium would be at hand. Gordon recog¬ 
nized the truth of their indictment: that indi¬ 
vidualism connoted stupendous waste, poverty 
for the majority, injustice, crime, war, disease 
and futile effort. 

But on the other hand he felt that such a 
readjustment presented problems infinitely 
more intricate than these enthusiastic ideal¬ 
ists comprehended; that the profit system 
was perhaps a remarkably ingenious auto¬ 
matic method of keeping the wheels turning, 
that the path of lasting progress involved 
gradual evolution; the usual liberal formula. 
He was in fact a liberal. Through both en¬ 
vironment and temperament he could not be a 
radical. 

A volley of applause greeted the first 
speaker who was to introduce the orator of the 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 115 


evening. Speaking with a foreign accent, too 
marked to be disguised but not sufficiently so 
as to render him at all unintelligible, his words, 
precise, carefully selected, and musically 
modulated, seemed to carry added weight 
because of their foreign flavor. 

“What gives him that air of breeding?” 
whispered Patricia. “And isn’t he good look¬ 
ing?” 

“He fought his way up out of the East 
Side,” replied Gordon. “Has run for mayor 
several times. Is a successful lawyer and said 
to be worth a good deal of money.” 

With a graceful period he closed his re¬ 
marks and into the center of the platform came 
lounging a striking figure. Tall, loose- 
jointed, old in years but not in spirit, with a 
face Lincolnian in its bony ruggedness, he 
stood surveying the applauding thousands 
with a smile which seemed a benediction. 
Salvos of applause more enthusiastic even 
than those which the first speaker had evoked 
resounded through the building. He began 
to speak, referred humorously to his “perpet¬ 
ual candidacy” for the presidency. He had 
represented his party many times, never of 
course with any expectation of success. 


116 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


Then he launched into his speech. It was 
a proletarian appeal aimed at developing 
solidarity and class consciousness in his hear¬ 
ers, delivered with an oratorical power which 
amazed Patricia and her companion. They 
did not realize that the ablest orators in the 
country were to be found in this movement, 
that their single-hearted absorption in a for¬ 
lorn hope was the dynamic which explained 
their extraordinary eloquence. For an hour 
the orator spoke, holding his audience breath¬ 
less ; then he swung into his peroration, beauti¬ 
ful in its rhythmic cadences, inspiring in its 
aspiration. 

“All through the black night of history you 
have been the disinherited. On the parched 
plains of ancient Egypt you toiled to build 
pyramids to pander to the pride of the Pha¬ 
raohs. In the galleys of Rome and Carthage 
you drowned like rats, chained to your 
benches. And for what? To gild the glory 
of Roman arms, to place a diadem in an 
emperor’s crown. During the Dark Ages you 
were serfs, with brass collars riveted about 
your necks, bearing your master’s name. 
Then came the harnessing of steam, the in¬ 
dustrial and mechanical revolution. You be- 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 117 


came slaves of the machine, more hopelessly, 
inextricably snared than ever before, for the 
guild worker of earlier days needed but train¬ 
ing and his tools to enjoy some degree of free¬ 
dom, while to-day the worker’s value when di¬ 
vorced from his tools, the factory, is nothing. 
And the factory is worth millions and belongs 
to capital. 

“But be not hopeless. We are the one in¬ 
ternational party, many millions strong. 
Seventy years ago we were an idea, to-day a 
powerful, closely knit, enthusiastic, world- 
encircling unit. The future is ours. Man is 
as one awakening from an age-long slumber. 
Eliminate the waste of individualism and there 
will be plenty for all. To each according to 
his needs; from each according to his powers. 
In the East at last the sun is seen, the long 
night of oppression, ignorance and injustice 
is over. Let us who are vouchsafed the vision 
of brotherhood dedicate our lives to this great 
task. Let us sink our little personalities in 
the work that lies before us, pledge our every 
last ounce of effort, our every last penny to 
the service of the race, and reap our reward 
in the knowledge that some day, probably 
after we ourselves have passed beyond, there 


118 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

will be in all our broad country not one family 
hounded by the fear of poverty, not one man 
cringing beneath the oppressor’s yoke, not one 
child denied fullest opportunity for education, 
health and happiness.” 

It was a rapt Patricia whom Gordon led 
from the hall. “Now I know how people feel 
who ‘get religion,’ ” she said after a long 
silence. “I never before believed in greatness. 
I always thought it was circumstance. But 
that man is great, spiritually great, like one’s 
conception of the Christ. His message is 
religious quite as much as economic. Not 
theological but religious. It was a religious 
exaltation which held that throng spellbound. 
It is the man’s humility, his complete ab¬ 
sorption in the mass, his gentleness and love 
which explain the devotion of his followers. 
I shall never be quite the same again. He has 
altered my conception of what a man should 
be, can evolve to.” 

Gordon looked at her curiously. He had 
long believed this leader to be America’s 
greatest figure but he was surprised at Pa¬ 
tricia’s prompt and instinctive acceptance of 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 119 

him. He had not thought that her percep¬ 
tions were keen and true enough so to out¬ 
weigh the standards of her environment. 

He is a world figure, a proletarian Bayard, 
sans peur et sans reproche . I once knew a 
man in Butte who was in close contact with 
him for several months. He said that the 
longer he knew him the more he saw, as he ex¬ 
pressed it, divinity shining through.” 

They found Keller in the library on their 
return, deep in a copy of one of Anna Kath¬ 
erine Green’s novels. He read detective 
stories with all the ardor of a boy. They and 
the National Geographic comprised his in¬ 
tellectual resources. 

“Oh! Oh!” he gasped as Patricia in a 
sudden mad mood hurled herself upon him, 
scattering book, cigar ashes and spectacles. 
“Don’t do that, Pat. You’re getting to be 
such a big girl and I’m getting along.” But 
he patted the bright head fondly and looked 
at Gordon with an expression of pride which 
the latter found pathetic. These two were 
linked so close in affection and he could 
plainly see were destined to drift so far apart 
intellectually. 


120 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

As for himself, he thought as he sped down¬ 
town in the subway, never before had he felt 
so close a sense of comradeship with Patricia. 
The evening in some obscure, incalculable 
fashion had forged a bond. 


CHAPTER XII 


During December Gordon was frequently in 
Patricia’s society. Imperceptibly they formed 
the habit of seeing each other a couple of times 
weekly. Sometimes they spent the evening at 
home; occasionally they went to the theatre, 
more often to the liberal or radical rallies 
which to Patricia were an endless stimulus. 

“To think of this surging tide of protest 
seething beneath the polished surface of 
Manhattan,” she said, “and hardly one person 
of my acquaintance is aware of it. It makes 
me feel like a conspirator. I always thought 
that New York was bounded on the south by 
the Ritz, on the north by the Plaza.” 

One evening she demanded that he take her 
to a spiritualist seance on West End Avenue. 

“I want to know all sides of the city’s life,” 
she declared. “I’m sure it will be a lark. 
The paper says that Marie, the Message 
Bearer, is in direct contact with the spirits of 
the departed and speaks purely by inspi¬ 
ration!” 


121 


122 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

They found the address without difficulty, 
a private house the front and back parlors of 
which were devoted to the seance. “The 
friends” as Mrs. Scofield, Marie’s impresario, 
called the audience, occupied the rear room; 
the front was dedicated to Marie and her in¬ 
visible attendants. The medium, a handsome 
girl in her twenties, proceeded to deliver a 
wearisome rigmarole devoted chiefly to cur¬ 
rent events. This achieved, the meeting was 
thrown open to questions. 

Up popped an old woman with wisps of 
gray hair hanging dankly about her ears. 

“Wot was that sperrit I seen in my pantry 
last Wednesday afternoon?” she demanded 
belligerently. 

Patricia grasped Gordon’s sleeve convul¬ 
sively and was promptly reduced to a helpless 
condition. Her stifled giggles proved con¬ 
tagious, some flappers seated behind her be¬ 
coming so demoralized as to call forth a rebuke 
from the acidulous Mrs. Scofield. Marie 
supplied full information regarding the spirit 
in question. 

It was not until after the singing of a couple 
of hymns, however, that the motive of the 
meeting was disclosed. Marie once more 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 123 


taking the floor announced that “from the 
spirits with whom she was in cawntact” she 
had received a message for the gentleman 
seated in the fourth row near the end, and she 
indicated an elderly man who appeared to be 
accepting the entire affair as an undoubted 
manifestation of psychic forces. 

“Your father is here,” she announced, “and 
says that if you will follow his guidance you 
will become wealthy beyond your wildest 
hopes. Next week a man . . . wait ... he 
is materializing before me.” She paused, her 
eyes became glazed; she seemed to be viewing 
phenomena invisible to mere mortal vision. 
“A dark complected man with a black mous¬ 
tache, middle-aged, inclined to be fleshy, a man 
wearing a red necktie and a checked suit—this 
man will approach you regarding an oppor¬ 
tunity to invest in a mine, a gold mine. 
Follow his advice; invest all you can—and you 
will become rich beyond the dreams of ava¬ 
rice.” 

Gordon fished an envelope from his pocket 
and penciled a message which he displayed to 
Patricia. “Don’t fall for that stale old 
swindle. The man who will call will prove to 
be a crooked promoter.” 


124 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


“So that’s it!” she gasped. “They ought to 
be exposed.” 

Gordon shrugged his shoulders and the 
meeting breaking up at the moment, dropped 
the slip of paper in the victim’s lap as they 
passed. A few minutes later as they stood 
waiting for a taxi, he came out. As he passed 
he eyed Gordon closely; then turning to see 
that he was unobserved remarked with a grin, 
“Thanks for the tip but I’m from the district 
attorney’s office gathering evidence. I’m 
letting them play me for a sucker. We’ll 
wind up their little show shortly. But keep 
it dark. You’ll be amused to know that my 
father is still alive and kicking up in Syra¬ 
cuse.” 

Arrived at the Kellers’, Gordon acceded to 
Patricia’s demand that he come in. They 
found Keller nodding over the Sunday paper 
and forbore to disturb his slumbers, finding 
refuge in a little upstairs sitting room in 
which a log fire smouldered. They talked 
over the evening’s events. Patricia was 
vastly entertained by this momentary contact 
with life’s seamy side. “It was like a play,” 
she exclaimed. “I’ll be so interested to watch 
the papers and see what happens.” 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 125 


“Poor souls!” said Gordon reflectively. 
“What amazing ingenuity they waste on their 
poor little swindles. And despite it all they’re 
always broke. I sometimes think that no one 
can help what he does; that he is merely walk¬ 
ing through a role—hypnotized—entranced. 
It is strange that so many people look the part 
they’re playing. That Mrs. Scofield. What 
could she be but what she is? If she were not 
staging Marie she’d be handling some fake 
cure-all or hair-grower.” 

They embarked upon a theme which held 
for Patricia a perennial fascination, “Into this 
Universe and Why not knowing.” 

“It is so strange,” she observed at length. 
“I’ve never discussed these things before 
though I’ve often pondered on them.” He 
had been explaining the theories of Plotinus. 
“It’s such fun to talk them over with you. 
You stir me up mentally. I live a great deal 
more inside myself now. Once it was all out¬ 
side.” 

He laughed at her ingenuousness. “Most 
of us Americans live too much outside per¬ 
haps. Extrovertive the savants call it.” 

“Which reminds me, though it’s by too 
roundabout a route to explain, a few of us are 


126 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

going up to the Culvers’ summer home on the 
Connecticut shore for the New Year’s week¬ 
end. Madge told me particularly to invite 
you. Mr. Wellington will be back from Chi¬ 
cago and she has asked him too. To be really 
a scientific sociologist you should put your 
subjects under your microscope in winter as 
well as in summer.” 

“But they’re so unsatisfactory, the sub¬ 
jects,” he explained. “You, for example. 
You’ve changed so since I first met you. I 
can hardly believe you’re the girl whom I 
kissed atop a stone wall only last autumn.” 
It was the first time he had ever referred to 
the episode. It was perhaps the intimacy im¬ 
plied by the quiet domesticity of the setting; 
the cheery fire, the small room, Patricia, her 
cheek in her palm, the warm glow of the flames 
touching her hair with gold, seated beside him 
on the davenport; Mrs. Keller safely stowed 
away in bed, her husband dozing in the library. 

“The girl whom you kissed?” Patricia’s 
gaze left the flames to encounter his with an 
air of amused friendliness. “Who kissed you. 
But it’s not chivalrous of you to remind me.” 
Then, her mood shifted, “Yes, I have 
changed,” she said seriously. “I’m through 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 127 


with all that. It’s cheap—worse than cheap. 
It’s infidelity to love ... to the dream. I 
can do my part even if the man I marry hasn’t 
done his, as of course he won’t have. You’ll 
come to Madge’s party, won’t you?” 

“Of course. It’s awfully decent of her to 
ask me.” He spoke in a tone of grim reso¬ 
lution. 

Patricia looked at him intently. A smile, 
no, just a ghost of a smile flickered for a 
moment about her lips. She recalled that she 
had remarked that Wellington would be there. 

“Don’t be cross about it,” she suggested. 

“Now why was I so boorish about that 
kiss?” Gordon wondered in helpless bewil¬ 
derment as he rode down Fifth Avenue in a 
bus. As a later recollection effaced the im¬ 
age he smiled, for Patricia’s last words had 
been, “Since you were so tactless as to refer to 
it, I will say that it was a perfectly satisfac¬ 
tory kiss, though now I realize that you should 
never have had it.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


“ ‘Lonely as God and white as a winter’s 
moon,’ ” quoted Madge, as they sat on the 
frozen shores of the little river adjusting their 
skates. Through the bare trees gleamed the 
lights of the Culver house. Its location, on 
the shore of the Sound at the mouth of the 
stream, was charming for August days, but 
now on this winter night, with the houses of 
neighboring estates black and forbidding in 
their tenantless emptiness, the little gathering 
felt a sense of isolation and loneliness which 
kept them closely grouped. It was a still eve¬ 
ning, crisply cold, though but little snow had 
as yet fallen that winter; while above, like a 
stage property in a Belasco production, as 
Jack Ingersoll had remarked, swung the 
moon. 

“One of yours?” Jack looked respectfully 
inquiring. 

Madge eyed him suspiciously. “You could 
hardly be expected to know that Joaquin 
128 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 129 


Miller said it about Shasta.” The two were 
always at swords’ points yet seemed drawn to¬ 
gether by a sort of fatal fascination. “Like 
dope,” Jack had once explained in Madge’s 
presence. 

“Come, children, it’s New Year’s. Better 
resolve to quit these quarrels.” Wellington, 
burly in furs, looked up from Avis Glendale’s 
shining skates. “There!” he said with satis¬ 
faction, giving a last twist to the key before 
rising, “those will stay put.” Hand in hand 
they went spinning over the smooth surface 
after Patricia and Gordon who were already 
skating upstream. 

“Speaking of lonely, Pat won’t be,” sug¬ 
gested Ingersoll. “Brought two cavaliers 
along.” 

“Cavalier is a strange word for Mr. Gordon! 
I think Wellington has met his Waterloo, but 
Gordon is girl-proof. One of those imper¬ 
sonal men—philosophers, I suppose. But 
Pat didn’t frame it. I asked him without 
prompting. I like him. He’s so simple and 
sincere; not smart Alecky.” 

“You can have the last word, Madge. I’m 
going to take Wellington’s tip.” 

“Don’t, please—I’d miss it. And I’d al- 


180 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

ways be worried about you . . . afraid you 
were going into a decline!” 

He laughed. “But seriously, I think you’re 
all wrong about Gordon. He’s falling hard 
and doesn’t know it. You don’t know it. 
Possibly Pat doesn’t know it. But old Uncle 
John can see the signs and portents.” 

“Nonsense! You mean his mooning about? 
He’s always that way. Don’t you remember 
last summer?” 

“They all fall for Pat,” asserted Ingersoll 
stubbornly. “I suppose the man’s human.” 

“And they say women gossip! Come 
along!” She held out her hand. He pulled 
her to her feet and they struck out. 

Approaching midnight found them grouped 
about the great fire in the living room, their 
gaiety hushed by an odd sense of the signifi¬ 
cance of the passing of the old year. It was 
perhaps Madge, incorrigible sentimentalist, 
who had succeeded in infusing a note of pathos 
into the moment. Or was it her mother, an 
unabashed Victorian, who had insisted upon 
reading aloud Tennyson’s lines. 


Full knee deep lies the winter snow 
And the winter winds are wearily sighing: 


PATRICIA S AWAKENING 131 


Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow. 

And tread softly and speak low, 

For the old year lies a-dying. 

A wind had sprung up and could be heard 
outside soughing plaintively through the leaf¬ 
less trees. Someone had extinguished the 
lights and although the logs flung a mellow 
glow upon their faces, the corners of the vast 
room loomed black behind them. “Let’s 
have a story,” someone suggested. “Let’s all 
have a hand in it,” amended Jack. “That will 
keep Madge within bounds.” 

Philip Greenough surreptitiously drained 
another glass of Scotch, knowing that Mrs. 
Culver had been eyeing him disapprovingly, 
and began, 

“It was a dark and stormy night and in the 
echoing silences of the vast living room of the 
old manor, a structure once the pride of the 
county but now, alas, fallen into disrepair and 
desuetude, sat the beautiful Genevieve; her 
hair of molten gold glinting in the light of the 
flickering flames of the driftwood fire. She 
seemed sad, and with reason. Opposite her, 
sunk in a drunken slumber, slouched an old 
man, whose features, now ravaged by drink 


132 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

and debauchery, still bore the indefinable stamp 
of caste and culture. It was her father.” 

Greenough rambled on with a narrative 
reminiscent of Mrs. Radcliffe in her most lurid 
vein. The villain, one Gouger McGraw, ab¬ 
ducted Genevieve. Her lover, Andrew 
Tabor, pursued them in his motor boat. Then 
he turned the story over to his neighbor, Inger- 
soll. 

And so the tale unfolded. Wellington 
proved unexpectedly fertile of invention, in¬ 
troducing a fascinating problem tending to 
suggest that perchance Andy and the Gouger 
were, unknown to either, father and son. But 
Patricia would have none of this and in the 
following chapter easily disproved this theory. 
Gordon surprised them by infusing a droll 
note of humor in the shape of an eccentric de¬ 
tective whose grotesque clues and Sherlockian 
deductions lightened the tragic theme. Avis 
Glendale, during whose instalment the hour 
of twelve struck, given a moment’s warning 
by the spring’s release, cleverly interpolated a 
paragraph whereby the clock struck dramati¬ 
cally in the narrative. Mrs. Culver concluded 
it in the ninth chapter with Genevieve safe and 
unscathed in Andrew’s arms, and her father, 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 133 


cured of his bad habits, once more a prosper¬ 
ous stock broker. 

Pamela Caldwell was voted to have con¬ 
tributed the cleverest chapter among the girls, 
Lawrence Dean among the men. The man’s 
prize was a gold cigarette case, the girl’s a 
beautifully chased gold penknife. Dean 
never smoked. Pamela was seldom without a 
cigarette, so they exchanged. 

“How typical of this decadent age!” ex¬ 
claimed Mrs. Culver in mock despair. 

“After all, the story was not so much more 
absurd than many of the current novels,” 
Pamela remarked. “I mean the cheaper sort 
where the hero longs for the wide spaces of 
the great silent West where a man is still a 
man and a woman a loyal mate—‘the red- 
blooded type.’ I wonder if people ever do the 
violent stunts novelists make them do? I 
mean for the motives they attribute to them, 
love, jealousy and so on. I’ve an idea that 
they don’t. I don’t know anyone who would. 
Either our crowd lacks the vitality to feel 
with sufficient intensity or it has more self- 
control.” 

“Howells always complained about the 
overstressing of love in literature,” observed 


134 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

Gordon. “Claimed that it played but little 
part in the vast majority of lives and that 
literature by featuring it so prominently was 
untrue to life.” 

“It has meant a lot to a good many people,” 
protested Patricia from the depths of a vast 
chair next his. “Hold it!” She lighted her 
cigarette from his half-consumed match. 
“The Brownings, for example.” 

“Name another,” Ingersoll challenged. 

She was silent, thinking. “Thousands,” 
she finally asserted. “But one doesn’t hear of 
them. They’re not in the public eye. In fact 
it’s lack of love which pushes many people into 
prominence. Denied it, they seek an outlet 
in ambition. Conferred it, they’re content to 
live quietly for each other.” 

Madge nodded her head in confirmation. 

“Incorrigible sentimentalists,” Ingersoll’s 
verdict. 

Someone started the phonograph, the rugs 
were pulled back and they were soon swinging 
about the room to the latest jazz record. 

“The next?” signaled Wellington as he 
passed Gordon and Patricia, Betty Cavendish 
in his arms. She nodded assent. 

“I had a case on him for a few weeks last 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 135 


summer but he doesn’t wear well. There’s an 
unpleasant Byronic flavor to him.” She 
looked to Gordon for confirmation. 

“Oh, Wellington’s all right. You girls 
seldom forgive a man for failing to measure 
up to an ideal which he never pretended to 
approximate. You hold him responsible for 
your own defects, a yearning for the unattain¬ 
able.” Gordon laughed as he looked down 
upon the blonde head. But though he spoke 
lightly, his arm unconsciously tightened and 
he clasped her for an instant with fierce in¬ 
tensity as though to protect her against Well¬ 
ington’s advances. He would never have 
selected Wellington for a comrade, but their 
relations were those of easy friendliness. 
They had in fact come down together in the 
train. 

“I will say that I think I’m stronger for 
him than he is for me,” he added, returning to 
the topic as they sat resting after the fox trot. 
“I suspect he’s quite mad about you and con¬ 
sequently rather inclined to resent any man 
who sees anything of you.” 

“Possibly,” she gazed at her fan thought¬ 
fully for a moment. “He is attracted by me; 
perhaps as much as he could be by any woman. 


136 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

But we interpret the word love differently. 
Not that I’m a prude, I hope.” 

“Mine, isn’t it?” Someone had started the 
Ampico this time and Wellington had 
promptly appeared. Gordon, caring little 
for dancing, wandered into the adjacent 
billiard room and seating himself in a balcony 
shielded by a drapery lighted a cigarette and 
gazed out over the wintry Sound. A light¬ 
house marking a ledge a mile offshore flashed 
its steady beams through the night, its radi¬ 
ance diminished by the effulgence of the west¬ 
ering moon. 

“How strangely remote, monastical, the 
lives of the men isolated in that lonely tower, 
he thought. “It must make for a philosophi¬ 
cal serenity, such as I myself have sought to 
achieve in the midst of the hurly burly.” 
Pursuing this train of thought he pondered 
upon exactly what it was which insulated him 
so effectually, for better or for worse, against 
life’s greeds and passions. An unwonted 
mood. Gordon seldom indulged in intro¬ 
spection. He glanced at his watch; it was two 
o’clock. With the realization of the hour 
came drowsiness. He leaned back against a 
pillow and dozed. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 137 


He awoke with a start, aroused by a vague 
sense of stress near by and beneath. 

“Don’t! I say don’t!” It was Patricia, 
her voice suppressed to avoid a scene, but in¬ 
dignant, enraged. She was struggling in 
Wellington’s arms, her face turned aside to 
escape his kiss. He pinned her arms to her 
sides and by brute strength was forcing her to 
yield. 

Something suddenly happened to Gordon. 
A sheet of flame swept him, it seemed literally, 
or was it an overcharged dynamo which sud¬ 
denly sent its voltage through his frame? He 
leapt the four steps to the floor, hurled himself 
on Wellington; his hands found his throat 
. . . ah! . . . what utter satisfaction, what a 
sense of well being, of an urgent hunger grati¬ 
fied. The flesh that yielded beneath the steel¬ 
like grip of his fingers ... it was as though a 
long denied joy had suddenly miraculously 
been vouchsafed him. 

With Gordon’s onslaught, Patricia had 
slipped from Wellington’s startled grasp. 
Plung to the floor by the leopard-like fury of 
the attack he had clutched desperately, fu- 
tilely, at his assailant but without effect. He 
was paralyzed by the suddenness, the maniacal 


138 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

intensity of the assault. His extra thirty 
pounds were of no avail. In the dim light he 
did not recognize Gordon. Patricia could 
hardly recognize him in this uncontrolled dis¬ 
play of brute rage, his eyes agleam with insane 
violence. She stood aghast as his victim 
seemed about to lose his senses, throttled into 
limp unconsciousness. She shook his shoulder 
wildly. It all seemed like a scene in a night¬ 
mare and Gordon’s silence made it all the more 
ominous—inexplicable. From a neighboring 
room came the joyous lilt of clamorous jazz. 

“Don’t kill him, Douglas!” she exclaimed 
using his first name unwittingly. Her re¬ 
sentment at Wellington’s caddishness had 
evaporated under the shock of this event. 

He looked up at her uncomprehendingly. 
Suddenly his whole expression changed. He 
released his grip and rose to his feet, pass¬ 
ing his hand vaguely across his brow. 

“Did I do that?” he exclaimed incredulously 
as he finally took in the significance of the 
scene. He sank weakly into a chair. Well¬ 
ington, revived by the release of the pressure 
on his windpipe, clambered clumsily to his 
feet. “Why, it’s Gordon!” he gasped. 
“What’s the idea?” 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 13 d 

Gordon was silent . . . seeking within him¬ 
self for some explanation, but to no avail. 

“I give it up,” he said at last. “I was 
dozing there behind the curtain, heard you 
trying to kiss Miss Keller . . . and then 
• . . then I turned into a tiger. It’s terrible. 
I might have killed you . . . wanted to. I 
must be going crazy.” 

Wellington’s glance rested on him sus¬ 
piciously, apprehensively. He had no lack of 
physical courage but he had seen murder in 
Gordon’s eyes, Gordon the gentle altruist. 
With trembling fingers he lighted a cigarette. 

“I’m sincerely sorry,” said Gordon. “I can 
see no justification for such an outburst 
though I certainly would have felt obliged to 
interfere under the circumstances.” 

“Well, I’m still alive.” Wellington’s 
attempt at jocularity was feeble. “But if 
you’re subject to those attacks I shall carry a 
gun.” He walked to a mirror which hung 
over a console table and adjusted his tie, then 
brushed the dust from his clothes. 

Patricia was thinking. “That was an ex¬ 
plosion from the subconscious. Gordon lacks 
the key even now. How little we understand 
ourselves!” 


140 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

“Well, what are you people up to?” Pamela 
Caldwell burst in upon them. 

“It’s never intrusion where you find three,” 
explained Pamela as she perched upon the 
arm of Wellington’s chair. Her companion, 
Greenough, whose perceptions were keener, 
regarded the trio curiously. He felt the 
strained atmosphere. A few moments later 
they all drifted back into the living room. 

“It was Pamela who said that people never 
did the violent things that novelists assert they 
do,” thought Patricia as she swept off into a 
fox trot with Greenough. 

As they trooped up the stairs at dawn, she 
found a chance to say, “Well, you achieved 
your object though your method was perhaps 
a bit strenuous. Thank you, Dr. Jekyll.” 

Gordon could not rise to her light level. 
He smiled wearily but it was clear that the 
revelation of himself had profoundly shaken 
him. 


CHAPTER XIV 


Whatever Wellington’s final conclusion re¬ 
garding Gordon’s outburst, he had apparently 
made up his mind to view it as a sudden inex¬ 
plicable seizure of no significance, for in their 
succeeding office relations no change was 
evident. 

That he had made an implacable and 
relentless enemy did not occur to Gordon. 
He himself was at a total loss to account for 
it. He even forced himself to contemplate 
the, to him, absurd hypothesis that he was per¬ 
haps in love with Patricia. But no, love was a 
sentiment of tenderness and gentleness; it 
could hardly convert a law-abiding citizen into 
a potential murderer. As for Wellington’s 
offense, he entertained no illusions about Pa¬ 
tricia. He realized that she had no doubt 
often yielded her lips to him. But for some 
reason the thought stabbed his heart. 

Patricia’s only reference to the matter was 
to remark, with a gleam of cold fire in her blue 
eyes when Wellington’s name was mentioned, 

141 


142 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 


“I can’t very well forbid the man the house 
considering his relations with father, but I 
think he realizes there’ll be no more tete-a- 
tetes. But you had best be on your guard. 
He will never forgive you. I know him.” 

“Still it was, in a sense, complimentary,” 
suggested Gordon. 

“Not from him—you don’t understand.” 
She made a moue of disgust. “Don’t let’s 
discuss it. There! he’s going to talk.” They 
settled themselves to listen to the platform and 
principles of the Bahai cult as expounded by 
a Persian adherent. Patricia had spied the 
announcement in the paper and demanded that 
Gordon take her to St. Mark’s-on-the- 
Bouwerie, the hoary old edifice, one of the few 
reefs to resist Manhattan’s tide of progress, in 
which the Bahaists held their meetings. 

“I’m collecting cults this winter,” Patricia 
had announced, “and it’s the most interesting 
hobby conceivable. In the first place, you see 
people in their most self-revelatory aspects; 
they’re all impressively in earnest. In the 
second place, most of the cults seem to have 
something to say that is worth hearing. 
They’re not all utter nonsense as I’d always 
assumed in my arrogant ignorance.” The 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 148 


truth of the matter was that inherent within 
Patricia was a strongly inquiring philosophic 
spirit which had, through her contact with 
Gordon, been stirred into action. She took 
her cults far more seriously than she permitted 
any but her companion to suspect. Often 
upon returning from a lecture they would sit 
talking over the ideas expounded until Gordon 
would with a start glance at his watch, utter an 
exclamation of horror, then sneak with comic 
furtiveness from the house. 

Fearing to arouse Mrs. Keller’s ire, Patricia 
made one or two efforts to draw him into the 
social whirl in which she still filled her some¬ 
what diminishing niche. But Gordon balked 
so obstreperously that she relinquished her 
efforts; it was so clear that he found it onerous. 
“Too much talk; too little conversation,” was 
his succinct verdict. 

February . . . Patricia and her mother on 
the Seaboard Airline. In a brief note ac¬ 
knowledging the receipt of a book, she re¬ 
marked that Palm Beach seemed more vacuous 
and meaningless than ever. “Gorky said that 
an American amusement park was the most 
mournful spectacle he’d ever witnessed, you 
once told me,” she wrote. “It implies so piti- 


144 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


ful a lack of inner resources. What would 
have been his reaction to the vulgar osten¬ 
tation, the crass savagery of this place?” In 
a postscript she added, “I miss you.” 

Gordon was strangely lonely. It was the 
first time in his life, since in his teens he had 
discovered the companionship of books, that 
he had experienced the sensation. He de¬ 
veloped the habit of dropping in to smoke a 
cigar with Keller during the evening. The 
big house seemed empty with Patricia’s im¬ 
petuous personality absent. They talked 
usually about business, sometimes of Clifford 
and the possibility of breaking him in to the 
Keller Construction Company upon his 
graduation from Harvard; never of Patricia. 
The contractor loved to tell about his early 
struggles; how he fought desperately against 
heavy odds; sometimes unscrupulous competi¬ 
tors, or again the blind forces of nature. He 
had battled for five years with a strong com¬ 
petitor who had placed spies among his force 
to stir up labor troubles; had practised sabot¬ 
age, a form of attack to which this business 
is peculiarly vulnerable; and had, in one in¬ 
stance, not hesitated to sink a seventy-five- 
thousand-dollar dredge. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 145 


“But I fought fire with fire, I don’t mind 
telling you,” he asserted, the light of battle 
showing in his eyes, “and the head of that con¬ 
cern is to-day a broken man; working as a 
timekeeper for McDonald and Lynch. I 
finally got him through a very simple plan. I 
bought his business through a dummy, on a 
down payment, balance secured by mortgages. 
Then I deliberately wrecked the concern while 
he had to stand there with his hands tied and 
see the work of a lifetime go to hell. He 
thought at first it was a blackmail scheme and 
offered to buy us off at a steep advance but 
he’d run into something worse than blackmail. 
There was nothing left but a bankrupt 
business when I got through. It cost me 
$150,000 but I made it up and a good deal 
more by having that competitor out of the way 
on the next contract I bid on. It broke old 
Dimmock’s heart but it was he that started it. 
He took to drink and McDonald keeps him 
on the payroll out of pity. He’s good for 
nothing any more.” 

Gordon sat pondering the story. This too 
often was the price of success. It reminded 
him of a painting, “The Conquerors,” which 
used to hang in the Metropolitan—Caesar, 


146 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

Napoleon, Alexander, all the world’s great 
generals advancing, their ranks passing be¬ 
tween piles of corpses slaughtered to lend 
luster to their fame. He felt that he himself 
was utterly incapable of such measures. He 
might have conceived the plan which doomed 
Dimmock. He could never have executed it. 

Keller’s face was somber as he contemplated 
the past. Did he feel any remorse? Gordon 
wondered. And then, his eyes falling upon a 
framed photograph of Patricia on the library 
table, he thought, “And it is from the swamp 
of such jungle struggles that the finest flower 
of our civilization, a beautiful, intelligent 
woman blooms. It is this that yields her the 
leisure and freedom from care which enable 
her to develop so spontaneously, which foster 
her delicate charm, which insulate her from 
worry and labor.” 

“Well, it’s a case of the survival of the 
fittest,” said Keller as though combating 
Gordon’s silent indictment. “Let’s play a 
game of billiards.” 


PART TWO 

A GIRL OF YESTERDAY 






CHAPTER XV 


It was late in March when Gordon left New 
York for Bellport. Patricia was lingering at 
Pinehurst. In response to his wire, Tony 
Cellini, who had remained at the quarry all 
winter, met him at the South Station in Boston 
and together they penetrated the devious 
labyrinths of the North End in search of labor. 

“What would Paul Revere have thought?” 
Gordon reflected with quizzical amusement, 
“could he for a moment have returned to his 
home and surveyed the hordes of Latins who 
surge past his door? And yet, why not? 
Did not Columbus come originally from 
Genoa?” As always the comic element of 
dealing with these voluble, gesticulating, in¬ 
genuous Italians appealed to him and, though 
he did not realize it, his unconcealed amuse¬ 
ment served him well in the present juncture. 
Men like to work for a man who has a sense 
of humor. The arguments regarding wages 
were long and loud, and the candidates 
appealed to high heaven, and in particular to 

149 


150 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

the Madonna, to support their assertions that 
never had they been insulted with so absurd 
an offer. It required nearly three hours of 
pourparlers to assemble a gang of approxi¬ 
mately seventy, enough, with the nucleus of 
drillers, hoisting engineers and powder men 
which had been retained, to begin operations. 

Arrived at the quarry, Gordon saw the men 
comfortably settled, then made a tour of in¬ 
spection. As he strode down the sea-swept 
dock, badly battered here and there by the 
winter gales, he felt a sense of contentment. 
The keen March wind bit viciously through 
his heavy overcoat; the slaty sea, reflecting the 
dun sky of the overcast afternoon, looked 
savage and forbidding. With the gaunt arms 
of the heavy cranes outlined against the wan 
western light, the bleak granite walls wet with 
melting snows, it was a repellent picture. 
Yet here was his world—the field in which his 
vitality found expression. His winter’s work, 
much of it office detail, seemed in retrospect 
futile fiddling, a woman’s job. 

He came to the pile to which the Valiant , 
now snugly stowed in Hereford Harbor, 
always tied; his thoughts reverted to that 
August afternoon when Patricia had en- 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 151 


trapped him on the tug. How their intimacy 
had progressed since then! Yet as he looked 
back she had in that first fugitive contact 
established their relations upon an enduring 
basis. They had discussed the ancient in¬ 
soluble problems, the questions which seem as 
unanswerable to-day as when thousands of 
years ago the writer of Ecclesiastes queried, 
“For who knowest what is good for man in 
this life, all the days of his vain life which he 
spendeth as a shadow?” 

So vivid was his impression of the girl’s 
personality, as he stood there in the keen 
salt wind it seemed that for a moment the air 
was faintly fragrant with the perfume of her 
presence; that he could feel the warmth of her 
vigorous young body aglow in his arms; that 
her voice in those sweetly throaty accents 
which so distinguished hers from the shrill in¬ 
tonation of the girls of her period, uttered the 
words which she had hastily scrawled as a post¬ 
script, “I miss you.” A moment, transitory, 
englamoured, when as in a vision, an illumined 
glimpse, he seemed to pierce the veil which 
obscures each man’s to-morrow and see that 
in the book of fate their lives were inextricably 
commingled, that, struggle as they might, 


152 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


destiny—inexorable, inescapable—had decreed 
their union. 

It passed. He laughed. It was unthink¬ 
able. Not that Douglas Gordon should as¬ 
pire to the hand of John Keller’s daughter. 
Gordon’s contempt for mundane standards 
would have seemed to many arrant presump¬ 
tion. But that Patricia, beautiful, popular, 
regal in her careless acceptance of men’s 
homage, should consider him seriously . . . 
that indeed was presumption. With that 
astounding capacity for self-deception which 
marks us all, he laughed away the thought. 

A wave lunged heavily against the pier; the 
spray splashed across his face. It seemed an 
omen, a symbol of what awaited vaulting am¬ 
bition. He thrust his hands more deeply into 
his pockets and laboriously climbed the hill to 
the men’s quarters. 


CHAPTER XVI 


“Now you boys better behave, I guess, what 
with a real live schoolma’am in the house. 
She’ll be down in a minute. So leave a mite 
o’ that apple sass, Captain Tucker.” It was 
Mrs. Hale’s fancy to assume a motherly 
tyranny over Gordon and the captain though 
the latter was ten years her senior. For the 
past week the two men had been hearing about 
the new schoolma’am and her reputed ac¬ 
complishments. 

“Went to a reg’lar college,” explained the 
widow, “not jest a normal school. Now what 
was the name of it? I declare I ain’t got no 
memory no longer. Miss Kimball was telling 
me. Her husband heard it from a feller over 
at Whitefield Mills. Anyway if she’s as 
smart as she’s pretty she ought to be principal 
of the Academy. And she’s so quiet appear¬ 
ing and refined looking. I didn’t aim to take 
no more boarders, but when she came to the 
door I jest couldn’t say no. I . . 

The door opened to admit Phyllis Winslow. 

153 


154 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


The captain’s deep bow in acknowledging the 
presentation was a tribute to the girl’s beauty. 
Congenitally susceptible, one could gauge the 
impact of a new face upon the captain’s chiv¬ 
alrous southern sensibilities by noting the 
exact angle of his bowed back as hand upon 
heart he bent forward. Gordon was his usual 
offhand, half-abstracted self, but it was clear 
that Mrs. Hale, for some reason, was insistent 
that the acquaintance progress, and she 
seemed to consider it an act of Providence 
that, as it developed, Gordon’s alma mater was 
but a few miles from the girl’s and the entente 
between them was traditional. The engineer 
was amused to discover that his recent resi¬ 
dence in the city glorified him in the girl’s eyes. 

“Oh, I think New York is just wonderful!” 
she exclaimed with a sort of muted ecstasy, her 
great gray eyes bedreamed in rapt contem¬ 
plation. “And to think of living there! I 
was there once for a week; it was in the spring 
vacation of my senior year and I’ll never for¬ 
get it. I took in everything I had time to— 
the Metropolitan Museum, Columbia, the 
Stock Exchange, and of course I went to the 
theatres. I’ll never forget that view of the 
city from Brooklyn Bridge. It reminded me 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 155 

of a beautiful sonnet of Wordsworth’s. 
Remember? 

“Earth has not anything to show more fair, 
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by 
A sight so touching in its majesty.” 


“It was your Carcassonne achieved,” sug¬ 
gested Gordon and his voice held a note of 
gentleness, almost of tenderness. There was 
an element of pathos in this girl’s life, ob¬ 
viously so restricted, so hampered, probably 
by economic pressure. 

“Yes,” she replied. “You see my father is 
a minister in a little country town. There 
are five of us children and there wasn’t much 
money for junkets.” 

“It’s dretful,” affirmed Mrs. Hale. “How 
miserable the pay is. Take our Mr. Petty, 
the Reverend Lemuel Petty if you please, and 
all we pay him is nine hundred dollars. I’m 
always stirring ’em up about it but all I get is 
the name of trouble-maker. Don’t you think 
it’s a shame, Cap’n Tucker?” 

“I certainly do, ma’am,” was the prompt 
reply. “Outrageous. I don’t know how 
they can get men to take up that line of work.” 


156 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


“But they feel a call to it, Captain Tucker,” 
replied Phyllis reproachfully, her manner be¬ 
traying a sort of old-fashioned rustic primness 
which evoked a smile from Gordon. The cap¬ 
tain remained discreetly silent. A preacher to 
him was a hybrid womanish product to be tol¬ 
erated in theory for his services in maintain¬ 
ing that admirable institution, organized re¬ 
ligion, but in practice to be avoided as the 
plague. 

“Just the way you felt a call to the sea, 
Captain,” Gordon prompted him good- 
naturedly. 

Dinner completed, the captain went down 
to the quarry to see to the lines of his scows 
for though it was mid-April he affected to 
smell wind in the offing, while Gordon settled 
himself beneath the lamp in the “front parlor.” 
Phyllis had gone to her room. 

As he sat glancing idly through the local 
weekly paper he fell to cogitating on the di¬ 
verse universes which walk about under con¬ 
temporaneous hats. This Miss Winslow with 
her sleek brown hair precisely “done up,” her 
discreet waists, her long skirts and conservative 
shoes, her Victorian culture and respect for 
learning; she seemed a girl of the nineties. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 157 

And yet she was younger than Patricia. . . • 
Patricia with her bobbed blonde hair, her un¬ 
abashed pride in her gracefully modelled legs, 
her mad moods of noisy gaiety, her scorn for 
academic attainments. Patricia mirrored her 
time. Phyllis a vanishing era. A rustle on 
the stairs and she stood at the door, hesitant 
as though fearing to intrude. Gordon arose. 

“I command you to sit in that chair, Miss 
Winslow,” he chaffed, indicating a large, old- 
fashioned, black walnut stuffed chair. “It’s 
the least uncomfortable.” As she leaned her 
head back she appeared like a girl in some 
quaint old print. She had a quiet dignity of 
manner, a “ladylike” precision, reminiscent, 
one might say, of a girl from a novel by Wil¬ 
liam Dean Howells. Her features, he saw, 
were sculptured a bit too finely, a tendency 
among New England women. 

“Tell me about your work,” he suggested as 
he laid down the paper. “Is it a stop-gap or 
does pedagogy appeal?” 

“I enjoy the children, most of them. But 
the discipline is wearing. Still it’s not un¬ 
pleasant work, and since I am lacking in any 
particular talent, I might as well be doing it as 
anything else,” 


158 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


“The career of a pretty girl ends so soon at 
the altar; or begins there so soon, if you prefer, 
that one can’t take their professional life very 
seriously.” 

“Thank you for the implication, but al¬ 
though of course every normal girl looks for¬ 
ward to marriage, the event is—what shall I 
say?” she smiled, “less sharply defined in her 
mind than it seems to be in yours.” 

“Most people do marry. Still, I haven’t,” 
he admitted. 

“And I mightn’t,” she affirmed. 

“What would you rather do if you had a 
choice of all the world’s careers?” Gordon 
demanded suddenly. She was silent, think¬ 
ing. The rattle of the dishes which Mrs. Hale 
was washing in the kitchen sounded shrilly 
through an opened door. 

“That’s a very searching question. I’ve 
never told anybody. And you’d laugh if I 
told you.” There was an unspoken appeal in 
her tone. 

“You know I wouldn’t.” 

“Well, at college I used to write a little for 
the magazine. I’d rather write but I know I 
can’t. I’ve tried and everything comes back 
with a rejection slip. I haven’t much talent, 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 159 


nor much experience, I’m afraid, as a back¬ 
ground. I’ve read a good deal but haven’t 
lived very much. And I just couldn’t write 
the kind of thing they seem to want nowadays 
anyway; such . . she hesitated, “such 
frank things.” She looked at him as though 
demanding his sympathy. 

“Yes, they rather overdo it, don’t they? I 
imagine it’s done cold-bloodedly, to ensure 
sales.” 

“I sometimes think there ought to be a cen¬ 
sorship. Some of the girls at college got to be 
so outrageous in their speech. Though of 
course one can choose one’s companions. I 
was in a different crowd, the Christian Asso¬ 
ciation. Coming from a minister’s family it 
was rather expected of me. Several of my 
friends have gone into settlement houses or 
social work, but I don’t like to get a living 
from philanthropic activities. One suspects 
one’s own motives.” 

“A good many don’t who ought to,” sug¬ 
gested Gordon with a laugh. “But I can see 
your viewpoint.” 

They fell to discussing economics, or rather 
Gordon told her something about the subject 
as he discovered that she knew little about it 


160 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


and that little was of the carefully dehydrated 
college brand. He soon dropped it to shift to 
literature with which they succeeded better, 
but Mrs. Hale’s entrance reduced the plane of 
talk to a more concrete level. The clock strik¬ 
ing eleven, the two women mounted the creak¬ 
ing old staircase. 

As Gordon sat for a few moments over his 
unread paper at the open window, his mood 
one of quiet contemplation, soothed by the 
tranquil beauty of the April evening, it was 
not upon his companion of the past few hours 
that his thoughts rested. It was not the calm 
accents of Phyllis’s voice which re-echoed in 
the chambers of his memory, not the picture of 
her cool gray eyes which flashed before his in¬ 
ner vision. Southward sped his errant fancy 
to a girl who had written, “I miss you,” to eyes 
of deepest sapphire in whose depths glowed a 
latent fire awaiting but the one predestined 
reciprocal spark to flame into that undying 
blaze which men call love. 


CHAPTER XVII 


To Gordon there was something of pathos in 
Phyllis Winslow’s position. She had had so 
few really good times. At college she had 
“worked her way” through tutoring, serving 
as local newspaper correspondent and so on. 
Now that she was earning something more 
than a bare living, her surplus went back to 
the family to help the younger children secure 
their educational opportunities. And so at 
twenty-three at a time when more happily 
situated girls are absorbed in a pagan rout of 
dances, flirtations, football games and out-of- 
door sports her vitality was expended in in¬ 
jecting the three R’s into a roomful of young¬ 
sters whose chief object in life seemed to be 
to reject the proffered dose of learning. It 
was from motives of purest altruism that he 
began to seek to bring some brightness into her 
drab life. He had bought an automobile in 
Boston, and suggested, one Saturday, that 
they take a run up the coast the following day. 

It was a Sunday in early May. Mrs. Hale 
161 


162 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

put them up a picnic lunch and after breakfast 
they started. The air was sweet with the 
scent of apple blossoms; the sea was blue with 
the celestial tint which mirrors a spring sky; 
and all the countryside was palpitant with that 
thrilling ecstasy which marks spring in New 
England. Phyllis herself in a pretty new 
gingham frock, the cheapness of which was not 
apparent to Gordon’s masculine perception, 
seemed the very spirit of spring incarnate. 
Her eyes shone like stars and once as they 
halted on a headland to absorb the beauty of 
sky, sea and blooming orchard, he surprised 
them wet with tears. 

“It’s because I’m so happy,” she confessed 
shamefacedly. “The beauty of it all. It 
stirs me so.” 

A wave of tenderness swept him and he felt 
grateful that he had been instrumental in 
giving her pleasure. As they drove through 
quaint old Derryport, this product of genera¬ 
tions of Puritanic repression gasped with de¬ 
light. And in the May morning with the sun¬ 
light filtering through the ancient elms and 
tracing charming patterns on the fa£ades of 
the stately colonial mansions, the scene seemed 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 163 


as though it must have been carefully staged, 
so satisfying was its beauty. 

She turned to him, cheeks flushed with 
happiness, and clutched his arm. “You’re 
giving me such a good time!” she exclaimed. 

It was on a sandy beach on the New Hamp¬ 
shire shore that with appetites whetted by the 
keen sea breeze they pulled up for lunch. 
Far down the strand a group of tiny black 
dots marked another party. Otherwise they 
were alone. Only the gulls swooped grace¬ 
fully over the plunging surf, screaming rau¬ 
cously at intervals. And occasionally a sand 
peep hopped discreetly past, hoping for 
crumbs from their lunch basket. They ate 
with the gusto of children, a vacuum bottle 
supplying gratefully hot coffee. 

As Gordon lighted his pipe he reached ab¬ 
sently in his pocket for the box of cigarettes 
he always carried in deference to Patricia’s 
needs. As he checked himself, he smiled. 
Phyllis would have been so grievously in¬ 
sulted. 

“Why are you smiling?” she asked. 

Not willing to be misunderstood, he told her 
about Patricia. 


164 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 

“Is she very beautiful?” she inquired wist¬ 
fully. “But then she’d make you think so 
anyway. Those society girls simply plaster 
on the rouge. And probably her hair is 
touched up and of course she uses a lip stick 
and eyebrow pencil.” 

“Meow!” he laughed. “Every count in the 
indictment is true and she’d be the last to deny 
it. She’s brazen about it.” 

“Such girls don’t wear well,” she affirmed, 
lips compressed. “They make charming 
sweethearts but unsatisfactory wives and 
mothers.” 

Patricia a mother! There was something 
incongruous in the conception. He turned it 
over in his mind. It seemed a shame to 
hamper that gaily soaring spirit with a brood 
of youngsters. Now Phyllis—why, yes. One 
visualized her as a born mother, bringing up 
a family with firm competence and a strong 
sense of a duty fulfilled. Totally lacking in 
that masculine egotism which finds expression 
in a desire for children to whom to transmit 
one’s precious characteristics, Gordon felt a 
faint sense of distaste at the thought of child¬ 
bearing. It seemed so physical, almost in¬ 
delicate. Why must a moment often of such 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 165 

ecstatic splendor as to transmute what to dolts 
can be ever but physical into an experience 
spiritual in its significance, why must it result 
thus? Why could not children be material¬ 
ized out of space? 

“Have you a photograph of her?” Her 
query awakened him from his reverie. 

“Why no,” he replied. He had never asked 
for one. “But I dare say she’ll be down this 
summer, though no one can forecast her where¬ 
abouts.” Seeing her hostility which cast a 
shadow over the bright hour, he changed the 
subject. 

“Do you know Matthew Arnold’s lines on 
Dover Sands?” he asked. 

She recited a few lines. “And do you 
know,” she added, “that Longfellow wrote a 
few really beautiful sonnets? Listen to his 
Milton tribute; it’s appropriate to the place. 

“I pace the sounding sea-beach and behold 
How the voluminous billows roll and run, 
Upheaving and subsiding, while the sun 
Shines through their sheeted emerald far unrolled, 
And the ninth wave, slow gathering fold by fold 
All its loose-flowing garments into one, 

Plunges upon the shore, and floods the dun 
Pale reach of sands, and changes them to gold. 


166 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


So in majestic cadence rise and fall 

The mighty undulations of thy song, 

0 sightless bard, England’s Maeonides! 

And ever and anon, high over all 

Uplifted, a ninth wave superb and strong, 

Floods all the soul with its melodious seas.” 

Gordon, who had been lying on his back, sat 
bolt upright. “Did Longfellow write that?” 
he exclaimed incredulously. “The man who 
wrote the Village Blacksmith? Please do re¬ 
peat it.” She acquiesced, enjoying his aston¬ 
ishment. 

“What a simply gorgeous thing; a master¬ 
piece! And nowadays we all smile tolerantly 
when his name is mentioned.” 

The hours sped quickly in the beauty of the 
spring day and it was with surprise that 
Gordon noted the time, four o’clock. “How 
the day has flown,” he said. 

“Hasn’t it?” she echoed. “I’ve loved it.” 

It was a long drive home through the deep¬ 
ening twilight which as Phyllis remarked 
seemed inappropriate to the season. 

“Spring,” she asserted, “is a morning 
season; autumn for long lingering afternoons 
and twilight.” She relapsed into a contented 
silence and for miles they exchanged not a 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 167 


word. “Don’t ask me to talk,” she explained. 
“I’m just being happy.” 

“Well, you folks had grand weather, didn’t 
ye?” observed Mrs. Hale as they entered and 
she scanned Phyllis’s face shrewdly. She had 
confided to Mrs. Toppan next door that she 
thought it a shame that a fine man like Mr. 
Gordon should be living a lonely life as a 
bachelor with so many sweet girls about sigh¬ 
ing for a chance to make some good man a nice 
home. 


CHAPTER XVIII 

“Just what do you make of that man, Mc- 
Connville?” Captain Tucker indicated the 
departing figure with a wave of his pipe, a 
heavily set, poker-faced, middle-aged man. 
Gordon and the captain were seated in the 
former’s office whence the new timekeeper, 
now under discussion, had just gone to check 
up the noon time. Four times daily he made 
the rounds with his little leather-bound book. 

“Make of him?” queried Gordon. “Why, 
he’s all right, I guess. When Tom quit a 
couple of weeks ago he slipped this chap in 
here to replace him; said he was a friend of his. 
I looked him over; he seemed efficient with a 
quiet competent manner so I took him on. 
His references were all right. How does he 
strike you?” 

“Seems a good scout. I haven’t a word 
against him. But what I couldn’t figure out 
was why such an apparently able man should 
be working for a hundred a month as a time- 
168 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 169 


keeper. Seemed sort of queer. Where did 
Tom know him?” 

“He’s been rooming up at Olson’s where 
Tom was located. Tom got a good offer from 
his brother who runs a garage in New Jersey. 
That’s how he happened to quit. Rut this 
fellow is all right. In fact, he worked for the 
government for some years. In the light¬ 
house service. I don’t know what he was 
doing down here. He hasn’t a great deal to 
say for himself.” 

“That’s just it. He sees everything and 
says nothing. I can’t quite make him out.” 
Captain Tucker’s eyes half closed as he 
pondered. “I stopped in here the other day 
and blamed if he hadn’t got all the duplicate 
records of last summer’s tonnage out of the 
desk. That ain’t his end of the work.” 

“Well, I suppose he was going through 
everything to get thoroughly posted,” Gordon 
suggested. He suspected the captain of a 
constitutional love of mystery and melodrama. 

“Yes, that sounds reasonable,” replied Cap¬ 
tain Tucker with a judicial air. “I wouldn’t a 
given it a second thought if it hadn’t been for 
a strange coincidence, a very strange coinci¬ 
dence, a remarkable coincidence.” He spoke 


170 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

impressively. Gordon waited. He knew the 
captain’s pleasure in leading up to his climaxes 
by devious routes. 

“It was down on the Gulf job this winter. 
The super’s office is in the back of the com¬ 
pany store down there and the storekeeper 
who is really an independent merchant, pay¬ 
ing the company a percentage on his volume, 
shares the office. It was some time in 
February that Lynch, the feller who had 
the store concession, sold out to another 
man, a stranger from the north named Baxter. 
The company had no objection so long as 
the new man was O. K. and had a good repu¬ 
tation. Some way or another they turned the 
job over to me of checking his references. I 
wrote our New York office and word came 
back that he was a hundred per cent. Among 
other references was that of the U. S. Govern¬ 
ment for whom he had worked for some years 
in the coast survey.” The captain paused to 
refill his pipe. “Begin to see anything?” he 
finally asked. 

Gordon shook his head. 

“An ex-government man buys the store con¬ 
cession at one of our contracts; another be¬ 
comes a timekeeper here. I confess I can’t 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 171 


see any significance in it. We have a lot of 
ex-government men. You, for instance. 
You were in the engineer’s department for six 
years. It’s natural. Waterside men gener¬ 
ally stick to the shore in some capacity or an¬ 
other.” 

“Only this—Baxter didn’t know enough 
about merchandising to weigh out a pound o’ 
tea. He had to depend entirely upon his 
clerk though of course he soon picked it up. 
Now I think it’s queer that ...” A long 
blast of the tug’s whistle broke up the conver¬ 
sation. Captain Tucker hastened down to the 
dock to supervise the landing of the scow, and 
Gordon turned to some work in hand, smiling 
as he contemplated the talk. Captain Tucker 
took a childish pleasure in letting his imagi¬ 
nation run riot and in creating plots and 
counter-plots from the most innocent premises. 
This he concluded was merely another in¬ 
stance. 

Captain Tucker’s fancies made so little im¬ 
pression upon Gordon that he had completely 
forgotten them by the following evening 
when, sitting upon the rocks by the shore in 
the starlight with Phyllis, she commented 
upon her reactions to the older man. 


172 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

“He seems jolly,” she remarked but with 
palpable reservations. 

“But,” suggested her companion. 

“I can’t see how you see so much in him. 
He’s inclined to be coarse and I’ve heard that 
he sometimes drinks.” 

Gordon laughed heartily. “He sure does. 
And often gets drunk. But that’s a peccadillo 
in a seafaring man.” 

She regarded him searchingly in the dim 
light, seeking to read his meaning. So often 
his banter troubled her. She never knew when 
to take him seriously. Concluding that he 
meant it, she replied with a deliciously prim 
air, “I wouldn’t call it a peccadillo. It’s a 
horrid trait.” 

“Oh, come now. The captain is all right. 
He has a heart of gold and I don’t know of 
anyone of whom I’m fonder. He’s true blue. 
Let him get drunk now and then. Lots of 
people would be improved, both in character 
and disposition, if only they would occasion¬ 
ally get drunk. It’s an outlet, a release for 
suppressed impulses.” 

“Now you are making game of me,” she ex¬ 
claimed in triumph. “And further I don’t 
believe you believe half you claim to regarding 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 173 


all that psycho-analysis you talk about.” 
Gordon had been scanning a recent volume on 
the subject and though his relayed interpre¬ 
tation of Freudian theories had been carefully 
expurgated the girl felt vaguely a taint of the 
indiscreet in the topic. Phyllis had so many 
taboos about conversation that Gordon, fresh 
from the happy-go-lucky atmosphere of Pa¬ 
tricia’s set where anything was permissible 
provided one were entertaining, found it diffi¬ 
cult to keep them in mind. 

What would Phyllis have been if brought 
up in Patricia’s environment? was a hypothe¬ 
sis upon which at times he found himself specu¬ 
lating. As to the reverse, the problem was 
simple. New York was full of vigorous, un¬ 
trammelled girls who had cut the Gordian 
knot of an uncongenial provincial environment 
through the easy solution of a railroad ticket. 
But how much of Phyllis was Phyllis, and how 
much Phyllis’s background? How many of 
her reticences were conventional; how many 
“acquired characteristics,” an inherited over¬ 
lading through generations of suppressing the 
natural instincts? 

“Well, anyway, to revert to Captain 
Tucker. Admitting that drunkenness is ob- 


174 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


jeetionable, in his case it’s a defect of a quality. 
It’s his sense of good fellowship, his necessity 
for warm human contacts that explains it.” 

“Did he ever try to stop? Don’t they have 
cures?” she inquired. 

“Heaven forbid! Don’t rob the captain of 
that resource. Really you know he doesn’t 
drink enough to harm. I mean he’s never 
drunk when it would inconvenience anyone, 
interfere with his work or cause any trouble. 
It is his boast that he can take it or leave it.” 

She shook her head. “It’s horrid,” she re¬ 
peated. “I’m glad you don’t drink.” And 
with a little sigh as though gladly dismissing 
a disagreeable subject to substitute its oppo¬ 
site, she added, “As though you could. It’s 
preposterous! But I think you’re too broad¬ 
minded. It’s because you’re so good. You 
have the tolerance of the untempted. Often 
a person condemns most bitterly the vice to¬ 
wards which he feels drawn. Not that I have 
a craving for alcohol,” she laughed and settled 
comfortably against a block of granite which 
served as a back rest. 

Beneath them swinging heavily in rhythmic 
cadence sounded the slow resurgence of the 
sea. Imperceptibly their moods responded. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 175 


They sat silent for awhile, for the time lifted 
above life with its insistent clamor. Desire, 
ambition, even that impersonal vitality which 
finds satisfaction in work well executed seemed 
to Gordon to be nullified by the tranquil 
serenity of the time and place. Phyllis, he 
felt, was sharing his mood. She was, he knew, 
sensitive to beauty, particularly if it were of an 
obvious type. Both ethically and aesthetically 
she was conventional, a conformist. 

“I do so love it down here at Bellport. I 
think I’ve never been so happy. I love the sea 
and have always longed for it. And though 
my position doesn’t pay very well I enjoy 
being in a small school where the organization 
is not inflexible. The session ends in a few 
weeks and I’ll go home for a visit, but I’ll re¬ 
turn to Mrs. Hale’s for the summer. You’ve 
been so kind to me; that’s one reason, perhaps, 
why I like it here.” She had a curiously di¬ 
rect way of acknowledging attention which 
embarrassed Gordon. 

“You mean you’ve been kind in lightening 
what would otherwise have been a dull time 
for me,” he protested. Then they drifted, 
appropriately enough perhaps considering the 
setting, to talking of love, love in the abstract. 


176 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

Phyllis’s ideal was romantic to the point, it 
impressed Gordon, of sentimentalism. 

“Love is a mating of minds,” she declared. 
“The novelists of to-day are so offensive. 
They reduce love to such fleshly levels. But 
that kind of love is transitory. A great love 
should be above such considerations. Minds 
can remain forever young but beauty fades 
and passion’s bright flame soon flickers out.” 

Gordon had thought little about love until 
comparatively recently, but he felt neverthe¬ 
less that her conception was immature—school 
girlish. As she abruptly changed the subject, 
however, feeling that the topic was hardly 
decorous, he was spared the necessity of com¬ 
mitting himself to an expression of opinion. 

They returned to the house as the clock 
struck ten. He reflected that there was 
really little upon which they were en rapport 
and he wondered why he enjoyed being with 
her. It was, of course, because he had a sense 
of giving her pleasure and this knowledge was 
sufficient recompense. He was almost her 
sole resource. Recognizing this he gave of 
himself freely. 


CHAPTER XIX 


“I do think I ought to be able to write that 
kind of thing.” Phyllis passed a Boston eve¬ 
ning paper to Gordon. 

“The Bedtime Tale,” he read aloud. 

Hippie Beaver hadn’t been in earnest when she 
threatened to call the dogs for she had no one to send 
for them. The eggs in the Ducks’ Oak had hatched 
long ago and Daddy Greencrest and Mammy Gay¬ 
wing had taken their flock on their summer pilgrim¬ 
age. Whisk Whippoorwill hadn’t come back; not 
because the hawk had caught him, but because he 
felt the Secret Pond was a better place to raise his 
chicks as long as the king was at Chips Beaver’s 
Pond—especially if you rested on the ground. 

“Of course you could,” he agreed. “Why 
don’t you?” 

The night had turned chill and foggy and 
they were reading beneath Mrs. Hale’s ornate 
parlor lamp. 

“I wouldn’t know how to sell it, or how 
much to ask or anything. How little one 

177 


178 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

learns at college that is of any practical value.” 

“Well, it just happens that I’m posted on 
this field. I met an old friend of college days 
in New York last winter who syndicates daily 
features to newspapers and he told me how the 
thing was done. He couldn’t very well han¬ 
dle another feature like this as he already has 
one but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t 
sell it direct.” He went on to explain the 
modus operandi which consisted merely in 
mailing a letter, order blank and sheet contain¬ 
ing sample installments to a list of newspapers. 
“You charge according to circulation,” he ex¬ 
plained, “from, say, five to ten dollars weekly. 
A book called Ayer's Annual gives the name 
of every publication in the country. There 
are perhaps five hundred dailies large enough 
to be worth covering. You should have a New 
York address, but I know that Mr. Keller 
would have no objection to your using that of 
his office; and the mail could be forwarded here. 
You might easily sell a half-dozen papers, 
perhaps more, and that would mean forty or 
fifty dollars a week.” 

“A good deal more than I earn now,” ex¬ 
claimed Phyllis her eyes shining, “and good¬ 
ness knows I need it. I could easily write 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 179 


them evenings and make carbon copies on my 
typewriter. Oh, do you suppose I could do 
it? I’m going up to my room right now to 
see whether I can or not,” and she rushed up¬ 
stairs impetuously to return an hour later 
with three daily installments of “Twilight 
Tales.” 

“Great!” was Gordon’s verdict, “and now 
I’ll get busy on the executive end. Write 
seven more, I’ll have the ten installments 
printed at the same time I have the letter 
heads, envelopes and order blanks done. And 
to-morrow I’ll ’phone Boston for an Ayer’s 
Annual. Then we’ll have to write the letter 
to accompany the samples, have it multi- 
graphed and filled in. All that remains is 
to mail them. Think of the thrill of mailing 
five hundred letters and then awaiting the 
returns! It beats roulette or horse-racing. 
And by doing it yourself you get all there is 
in it. A regular bureau would assume all 
expense, to be sure, but would give you as 
author only half the gross revenue.” 

“What will the expense be? I forgot about 
that.” Phyllis’s face fell. 

“Sixty or seventy dollars will easily cover 
it and I demand as accessory after the fact the 


180 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

privilege of advancing it.” Despite the girl’s 
protests thus it was arranged. 

Nearly two weeks passed before details 
were finished and everything was assembled 
for the cast of the die, two weeks in which 
Phyllis’s moods ranged from the heights to 
the depths. Sometimes she felt certain that 
doubtless every newspaper which was a pros¬ 
pect had already been sold a competing serv¬ 
ice; in other moods, it seemed certain that at 
least twenty out of five hundred would order. 

“If you sell one out of a hundred you’ll do 
well,” Gordon told her. “The mail merely 
picks out the easy ones and there aren’t many 
of those. In about three months you should 
launch a follow-up-campaign.” 

Two busy evenings were passed folding and 
inserting; the signing of the letters had been 
done by the multigrapher. Mrs. Hale who 
kept in closest touch with proceedings declared 
that she was “all of a flutter.” 

“What a lot of letters five hundred are!” 
exclaimed Phyllis as at last they were tied into 
neat bundles ready for transport to the post 
office in Gordon’s machine. She picked one 
out at random and opened it to make sure that 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 181 

all was in order. First the broadside upon 
which was printed the sample stories; then the 
letter explaining the proposition, quoting 
rates, and finally the order blank. Each en¬ 
velope was addressed “Managing Editor” as 
they knew of no way to secure the names. 

“Gorry mighty but you’re writin’ a lot of 
letters, Miss Winslow,” was the verdict of 
Mr. Ellicott, the local postmaster, his chin 
whiskers wagging agitatedly as he opened the 
wicket of his window to receive them. He 
was distinctly aggrieved that she vouchsafed 
no explanation. 

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he opened one 
to find out what it’s all about. How can you 
be so calm, Douglas Gordon?” she demanded. 
“I’ve never been so excited in all my life. Just 
picture it on the map. Five hundred separate 
strands all diverging from this little spot and 
extending all over the United States. Each 
letter knocks at a door. In some places a 
voice says, ‘How do you do? Come in,’ and 
in others there’s a gruff, ‘Go away, I’m busy.’ 
I do hope there isn’t a train wreck. My poor 
little letters! They’re so frail to be traveling 
so far and asking for money. Now,” as they 


182 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

drew up before the house, “I must go in 
and correct examination papers. What a dull 
task for one in my frame of mind!” 

Gordon was less calm than he appeared. 
He realized that though the financial invest¬ 
ment was trivial a vast deal depended upon the 
success of the idea. If successful, it would 
probably lift Phyllis out of the dull routine of 
school work, for she might easily conduct a 
half dozen daily features. If it failed. . . . 
“Well, it won’t fail,” he affirmed. “It can’t 
fail.” 

They had mailed the letters Monday, figur¬ 
ing that in the majority of instances they 
would thus avoid the danger of arriving in the 
heavy Monday morning mail. As replies 
would have to be forwarded from the New 
York address they expected no returns that 
week. Nor were they disappointed. They 
were seated at lunch Tuesday of the succeeding 
week when the telephone rang. 

“It’s for Miss Winslow,” Mrs. Hale re¬ 
ported. Phyllis went to the instrument. 

“Hereford, Western Union talking,” came 
a voice over the wire. “Message for Miss 
Winslow from New York. All ready?” 

“Yes.” 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 183 


“Cleveland Press and Buffalo Times wire 
acceptance ‘Twilight Tales’ service. Breen.” 

“Oh, goody!” Slamming down the receiver 
she tore into the dining room with her mes¬ 
sage. 

“First blood, eh? They must have wanted 
it badly; hence the wire instead of the mail.” 
Gordon was quite as elated as Phyllis though 
less demonstrative. Thursday brought two 
more orders by mail; Saturday another and 
the following week three more. Thus Phyllis 
found herself earning some sixty dollars 
weekly in addition to her salary. 

“And a follow-up campaign, you say, will 
probably add three or four more? Oh, isn’t 
it simply wonderful? Nor is there any reason 
that I can see why they shouldn’t buy the 
service for years. I owe it all to you. I 
wouldn’t have had the least idea how to go 
about it. You ought to have half of all I 
earn from it. I insist.” 

But Gordon laughed off her proposal. 
“My reward is the glory of having launched 
Phyllis Winslow on a glittering career,” he 
said. “ ‘I knew her when’—that is what I can 
say. For it is quite clear to me that you are 
destined for literature rather than pedagogy, 


184 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


and New York is already extending its 
tentacles.” 

“I shall never, never forget what you’ve 
done!” exclaimed Phyllis earnestly. With a 
delicious air of a woman of affairs she gathered 
her papers together preparatory to climbing 
up to her room, in the hushed precincts of 
which she labored over her “Twilight Tales.” 


CHAPTER XX 


“Parson, you don’t look right peart. You 
might a’ seen a ghost. Better have a drink.” 
Captain Tucker had just entered the office. 

“You’re the doctor, Captain. Whatever 
you prescribe.” As the older man poured out 
two fingers of Scotch, Gordon slipped an 
opened letter into his pocket. Received at 
Mrs. Hale’s, he had not read it until arriving 
at the quarry. Filling the glass to the brim 
he downed it. 

“You’re liberal enough all right, once you 
make up your mind to it,” and the Captain 
downed a duplicate. “I swear I believe that’s 
the first he-drink I ever see you take.” 

A yell from outside and the two men 
hastened down into the quarry. A stray piece 
of dynamite exploded by contact with a pick 
had frightened a pick and shovel crew. It 
was not until noon that in the quiet of his 
room, Gordon had the opportunity to re-read 
his letter, the erratic impetuous chirography 
of which betrayed it as Patricia’s. 

185 


186 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


Dated at Southampton it dealt briefly with 
her movements during the spring—and then 
... “I know you’ll wish me happiness in my 
engagement which this time is a really, truly 
one. I met him at Palm Beach and I know 
you’d approve, which means a lot to me, though 
of course you don’t believe it. He is a New 
York man, Allen Beaudry, of Beaudry and 
Company, an old financial house; a Yale man, 
thirty-four years old. Not a bit the orthodox 
country club, golfing, hunting type, but with a 
fine mind and a social conscience. Don’t think 
that because I met him at Palm Beach he’s 
that sort of person. Here’s a snapshot of 
both of us, but as Dad has taken a suite at the 
Tudor Arms for July and August and he’ll be 
down you’ll be sure to meet him.” 

Beaudry, Gordon concluded from the pho¬ 
tograph, was decidedly good looking with a 
certain seriousness approaching severity un¬ 
usual in a man of his years. “He has char¬ 
acter,” he reflected, “but I should think that 
Patricia’s madcap moods would disturb him. 
I see no trace of humor.” And then he sat for 
a long time, apparently scanning a Landseer 
steel engraving which hung on his wall, Mrs. 
Hale’s conception of decoration. He was 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 187 


seeking to adjust himself to a situation which 
so far as he had ever consciously confessed 
required no particular adjustment. Why 
should the impact of the news have tempo¬ 
rarily stunned him? Why did he now feel an 
inexplicable sense of utter abandonment, of 
desolating loneliness? Why did his work as 
he contemplated returning to the quarry sud¬ 
denly seem the very essence of futility; a tire- 
somely perfunctory performance to be exe¬ 
cuted not for the satisfaction of self-expres¬ 
sion but for a mere monthly salary check? 

He was getting stale . . . that was it. In 
the fall he’d resign and secure a position in 
some manufacturing plant installing the Tay¬ 
lor system; or better still he’d go to England 
or the continent. There was a crying need in 
Europe for men of his training. At length 
he arose, walked heavily down the stairs and 
drove the half mile to the quarry to lose him¬ 
self for a couple of hours in the problem pre¬ 
sented by a balky traveling crane. 

“To-day school ended and to-morrow I’ll go 
home for a couple of weeks. I’ll be quite a 
heroine to my younger sisters with my work 
appearing in print, even if it’s only ‘Twilight 


188 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 


Tales.’ And to think I never have to go back 
to a schoolroom unless I want to. I feel as 
though I’d inherited a million dollars.” 

It was evening and they were driving at 
Gordon’s suggestion to a beach resort which 
with its dance halls, bowling alleys and merry- 
go-rounds supplied amusement in its crudest 
form for Hereford’s masses. 

“I’m so happy,” Phyllis went on. “I wish 
you were. You seem so subdued to-night. 
You never take a vacation, do you? That is 
the trouble.” Her voice held a note of ma¬ 
ternal concern. 

“No, it’s just that I need a change,” and he 
told her of his nebulous plans for going to 
Europe in the fall. “You don’t approve, I 
see,” this after she had received his remarks 
in silence. 

“I can’t imagine what suddenly put such an 
idea in your head. No, I don’t see any point 
to your wandering about the globe so aimlessly. 
If it’s stimulus you need you won’t find it 
that way. I remember Emerson said some¬ 
thing about the futility of traveling for any 
such purpose; said traveling was a fool’s para¬ 
dise; that we owe to our first journeys the dis¬ 
covery that place is nothing. Don’t you re- 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 189 

call that passage? He went to Naples and 
there beside him was the stern fact, the sad 
self, unrelenting, identical, that he fled from?” 
She turned and faced him suddenly. “It’s 
something to do with that Patricia Keller,” she 
accused with the unerring intuition of her sex. 
“You heard from her this morning. I saw the 
letter by your plate.” 

“What has Patricia Keller to do with my 
actions?” demanded Gordon, vexed at her per¬ 
spicacity. “How absurd! She did write me 
and remarked among other items that she was 
engaged to be married. Well, that’s interest¬ 
ing but of no particular import to me.” 

Phyllis immediately changed the subject 
and soon had him interested in her plans for 
adding more features to her list. “I could 
easily write three or four more,” she ex¬ 
plained. “The question is, on what subjects?” 

They soon wearied of the clamor and garish 
glitter of Halcyon Haven, which was the re¬ 
sort’s mellifluous title, and drove down the 
shore through the darkness of the June eve¬ 
ning odorous with bayberry and wild roses. 

“Let’s get out and sit on the beach,” she 
suggested. “It’s a heavenly night.” Close 
to the edge of the surf which boiled and hissed 


190 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


in the starlight Gordon spread a rug from the 
machine. Perhaps it was the sense of inde¬ 
pendence engendered by the success of her fea¬ 
ture; perhaps the knowledge of Patricia’s en¬ 
gagement; perhaps an intuitive sense that a 
man’s love thus repelled, and Phyllis believed 
Gordon to be in love with Patricia, often seeks 
another channel of expression; perhaps the 
spell of the hour and place or what is more 
likely, the urgent insistence of the needs of her 
nature—the eternal woman beneath the per¬ 
sonality of Phyllis Winslow; whatever the 
reason she found herself nestling close to her 
companion. 

A mood of reckless abandonment swept over 
Gordon. He knew that to Phyllis a kiss was 
of far greater significance than to the girls of 
Patricia’s frivolous group but he felt strangely 
passive as though something had deleted his 
will, blinded him to consequences. His arm 
encircled her; his lips found hers. 

“Oh,” she exclaimed breathlessly, “I love 
you!” As her arms went about his neck she 
was for the moment an almost totally different 
individual from the Phyllis Winslow she or 
anyone else had ever known. It was her first 
kiss. Upon Gordon was lavished that flood of 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 191 


feeling which is released when the dam gives 
way and a repressed nature abandons itself 
utterly to its emotional dynamic. Nor was 
Gordon unshaken. 

It was past midnight when they arrived 
home. Mrs. Hale had long been asleep. 

“And I have to leave on the eight o’clock 
train in the morning,” said Phyllis, her voice 
almost a whisper to avoid waking the old lady. 
“I must go right to bed.” But it was another 
hour before they could bear to say their final 
good night. Strangely Gordon promptly fell 
into a dreamless sleep. 

Nor did morning which dawned blithely 
bring disillusionment. “Oh, how beautiful 
you are!” he exclaimed as Phyllis, hatted and 
veiled, smart in her modish traveling suit, 
entered the dining room. 

“Sh!” she raised a warning finger. Mrs. 
Hale was just entering from the kitchen. 
But her happiness was so manifest, she seemed 
so triumphantly radiant that the older 
woman’s glance rested on her with shrewd sus¬ 
picion. 

“I declare I never seen you so scrumptious,” 
she affirmed. “You must be terrible fond of 
your folks. ’Tain’t very complimentary to 


192 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


me and Mr. Gordon,” she added with a good- 
humored smile. 

The train was pulling in when they reached 
the station but she did not forget to yield him 
her lips, and her last words were, “I’ll write 
you to-morrow.” To Gordon that farewell 
kiss was inexpressibly affecting. It was 
Phyllis’s public acknowledgment of their re¬ 
lationship and his emotion was perhaps colored 
by a certain pride in this evidence of his con¬ 
quest of so beautiful and desirable a woman. 

Like the fragrance of a beautiful flower the 
episode suffused his whole day. And it was 
but yesterday morning that he had sat stunned 
as by a bullet’s blow at the news of another 
girl’s engagement. He smiled derisively as 
he recalled it. Now he was to marry Phyllis. 
A month ago who would have predicted it? 
What an interesting, stimulating, altogether 
entertaining experience was life. Too long 
had he been a mere observer; now he was be¬ 
ginning to live. 

Boarding the tug which lay alongside the 
dock he found Captain Tucker seated in the 
pilot house before a table which ordinarily 
swung flat against the wall. Pipe in mouth 
the old man sat watching the antics of a group 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 193 


of small brown objects which lurched drunk- 
enly about on the wooden surface. “Mexican 
jumping beans,” he explained. “Just got 
’em in the mail from Dan Kavanaugh down on 
the Gulf job. I suppose there’s some kind of 
worm or insect inside makes ’em jump about 
so. They say if you give ’em water once a 
week they’ll jump for months.” 

Gordon sat down. “Captain, they remind 
me of ourselves,” he observed after awhile. 
“Hopping blindly about in obedience to some 
obscure instinct; with no knowledge of their 
final goal; no conception of a world outside 
that little bean. 

“A riddle this since Time began 

Which many a sage his mind hath bent to; 

All came and went but never man 

Knew whence they came or where they went to. 

“We must look like that to the gods and 
probably they’re looking down on us right 
now with the same impassive interest that we 
focus on these things.” 

“Now that’s what it is to have a head like 
yours, Parson,” exclaimed Captain Tucker 
admiringly. “I wouldn’t o’ thought o’ that in 


194 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


twenty years. Or if I had I couldn’t ov said 
it so slick. You’re wasted in this business. 
You ought to be writing books or making 
speeches or something. You’re a philosopher. 
Ain’t that right, Cap’n Sorenson?” 

The Swede scratched a match. “Pad pisi- 
ness,” he grunted. “Petter nod tink such 
toughts. Make pelieve as how tings bane wort 
toing. Only way to get trough. Trouble my 
peeble—tink too teep. Make ’em what you 
call . . .” he hesitated, groping, “me-lan- 
cholly,” he pronounced it laboriously, sound¬ 
ing the “ch” as in “choice.” He turned away 
from the jumping beans as though disapprov¬ 
ing the train of thought they engendered. 

But it was not of jumping beans that 
Gordon was thinking that evening when he 
sat down to write at the little table in his room. 
Soft arms encircled his neck and Phyllis’s low 
voice seemed again to say, in startled wonder, 
“I love you.” Occasionally his pen would 
stop and for uncounted minutes he would gaze 
foolishly into space, yielding himself utterly 
to the spell of memory, experiencing again 
with scarcely muted poignancy the thrill of 
the previous evening. 

His letter to Phyllis completed, he wrote a 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 195 


brief note to Patricia congratulating her upon 
her engagement but making no reference to 
his own. He would leave the time and 
manner of the announcement to Phyllis. 


CHAPTER XXI 

Phyllis’s letters to Gordon were curiously 
decorous with a decidedly literary flavor, as 
though she viewed them as experiments in 
English composition. It seemed incredible 
that they could be an expression of the same 
girl who had yielded her mouth to him, lain in 
his arms, avowed her love. She wrote of her 
family’s ingenuous pride in her journalistic 
success; of the scrapbook of her writings which 
her mother was keeping; of her sisters’ awed 
regard. “I have not told them of our engage¬ 
ment yet because I want you to be absolutely 
sure. My absence will be a kind of test; not 
for me, for I need none, but for you, my be¬ 
loved. I want you to feel completely free.” 

One letter contained her photograph taken 
in her commencement frock. Gordon propped 
it up on a table. In its classic poise, its calm, 
frank gaze, a certain serenity of expression, it 
was reminiscent of some famous painting 
which he had seen. 


196 


PATRICIA S AWAKENING 197 

“She looks like Abbott Thayer’s ‘Caritas,’ ” 
he suddenly exclaimed aloud. He felt 
humbled at the thought of her surrender of her 
future to his care. And he condemned him¬ 
self for having criticized what had sometimes 
seemed to him the rigid formalism of her out¬ 
look, her failure to comprehend his tolerant 
sympathy for humanity’s weakness, the fra¬ 
ternal affection which he felt and displayed 
towards all kinds of people deemed socially 
and ethically impossible by the respectable and 
respected. He did not realize how funda¬ 
mental and far-reaching was the gulf thus in¬ 
dicated nor how soon was Fate prankishly to 
accentuate it. 

“Oh, Douglas, people are looking!” Phyl¬ 
lis colored hotly and yet her self-consciousness 
subtracted nothing from the warmth of the 
kiss she bestowed upon him as he lifted her 
down from the steps of the train. “I’m so 
glad to get back.” As he slipped in under the 
wheel of his car, she snuggled closely against 
him. She told him the details of her visit; her 
family’s pleasure in her success; how one of 
her sisters had explained in introducing her to 
a schoolmate that Phyllis was a “writer.” 

“It’s amusing, isn’t it? And all over those 


198 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

childish little tales which any high school girl 
could write. 

“Oh, it’s wonderful to get back,” she re¬ 
peated. “I missed you so.” 

“And I . . . you had your family. While 
I had but the cold comfort of a photograph.” 

“How dear she is to me!” Gordon thought 
as a warm rush of feeling enveloped them: the 
natural reaction perhaps to their fortnight s 
separation. 

It was but a few evenings after Phyllis’s 
return; a warm June night, the heavy fra¬ 
grance of the roses sharpened by the tonic 
touch of a threatened sea turn. Gordon had 
driven to Hereford for an hour with a dentist 
and was scheduled to return by nine o’clock. 
As he drove slowly through the narrow streets 
of the old fishing town thinking of Phyllis 
whom he would find awaiting him on the 
porch, he suddenly heard sounds which seemed 
to presage a disturbance. He was driving 
through a water-front street when he heard 
high words from a disreputable “speak-easy” 
on the corner. 

“Yesh, I’m over shixty an’ all shotopieshes 
from booshe an’ shtillanall I c’n lick any shon- 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 199 


ofagunafo Herf’d fish’man th’t ever shaded to 
the Banksh!” 

Crash! went a glass splintered to fragments, 
flung perhaps by the speaker to emphasize his 
challenge. Gordon recognized the voice as 
Captain Tucker’s. At the same time he saw 
a knot of fishermen who had been standing out¬ 
side begin to drift through the swinging doors. 
Gordon pulled up to the curb—stopped his 
engine—leapt out. He entered. Through 
the heavy haze of pipe smoke he discerned the 
Valiant's full complement lined up at the bar. 
Captain Sorenson, his mate Flannery, the 
engineer, Shea, a huge, freckle-faced, red¬ 
headed Irishman, and three deck hands; also 
Jerry O’Hearn, Gordon’s superintendent, 
Dennie McTighe, a walking boss and Captain 
Tucker—nine in all, and all drunk. Gordon 
recalled that it was the captain’s birthday. 
A yell of recognition went up. He was 
dragged to the bar, pounded on the back; 
everybody demanded that he shake hands, 
have a drink, join the party. 

“Parshon, itsh plumb prov’densh’l,” Cap¬ 
tain Tucker assured him earnestly, swaying 
slightly from side to side. ‘Here itsh my 


200 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


birthday an’ I wanted you more’n anyone; 
n’herey’are, n’moren’nat I got to lick some o’ 
these godam fish’men, n’moren’ likely I’ll kill 
a half doz’shn, n’maybe a doz’shn and here 
y’are, parshon, to giv’m a,” he hesitated, could 
his tongue manipulate it?—“to gim’a fun’l 
shervish.” 

Roars of Homeric laughter from the Bell- 
port group, but the captain’s sally found no 
response from the fishermen who were gradu¬ 
ally filling the saloon. 

Gordon downed a glass of whiskey feeling 
that only by seeming to join in could he control 
in any degree what promised to develop into 
an ugly situation. He hoped to get the cap¬ 
tain into the machine. He studied the Bell- 
port men closely seeking to ascertain if any 
retained any signs of sobriety or caution. 
O’Hearn seemed least affected, physically at 
any rate. 

“Going to be an awful row, Jerry,” he 
muttered into the latter’s ear. “The captain’s 
too old for a rumpus. Can’t we get him 
home? My machine’s outside.” 

“Don’t you worry, parson, ’bout Cap’n 
Tucker. He’s drunker’n any of us. Too 
drunk to put up a fight. So he’ll just flop in 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 201 


a chair or somewheres while the rest of us is 
stanin’ up to it. Too late to get ’im out any¬ 
ways. Hell, parson, we’ll clean ’em out. 
Stick eroun’—goin’ to be a gran’ fight! These 
fishermen’s a husky gang.” It was plain that 
O’Hearn’s chief fear was that the foemen 
might prove unworthy of their mettle. 

“But look here, O’Hearn—what about the 
job? You’ll all land in the lock-up.” 

“Saturday night, parson, to-morrow’s Sun¬ 
day. Come on, have another drink!” 

Someone put a nickle in the mechanical 
piano and above the clamor of drink-thickened 
voices sounded a snatch of jazz. 

“Now thash what I mean. I shay all fish’- 
men ’shended from g’rillas; all Her’ford fish’- 
men anyway. It’s shience. Not you an’ me. 
But fish’men. Look a’ tha’ one. Ain’t he 
g’rilla ? Provsh it.” Captain Tucker’s voice 
broke a momentary lull, as standing unsteadily 
by the bar, he pointed with wavering finger 
at a heavily built, swarthy man whose shirt, 
opened at the throat, disclosed a hairy chest. 
The man was drunk as was everyone present, 
in greater or less degree, except Gordon and 
the two barkeepers. 

“Gorilla, eh?” he yelled. “I’ll g’rilla you, 


202 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 


you dam potbellied ol’ gopher !” He stepped 
from a group of fishermen, lurched up to the 
captain and flung a schooner of beer in his 
face. Captain Tucker never landed his blow 
as the man dropped instantly from O’Hearn’s 
smash on the jaw. 

Bedlam broke loose. For a few moments 
man stood up to man, but it swiftly degen¬ 
erated into a chaotic battle in which one fought 
blindly and desperately hoping that he was 
hitting one of the enemy. Gordon was fight¬ 
ing a lithe little leopard of a Portuguese when 
a blow on his ear nearly sent him through the 
window. He ducked and swung on the ag¬ 
gressor, landed squarely between his eyes, 
pivoted to meet his original foe to find him 
groaning on the floor. Shea had smashed him 
in the solar plexus. Sorenson, slow at foot¬ 
work, proved to have a terrific wallop in his 
fists. He stood, back to the bar, and with 
awkward power floored every man who stood 
up to him. He suddenly went down, how¬ 
ever, a blow over the head with a bottle laying 
him out. 

“Ye cowardly shcut!” yelled McTighe, and 
with a heavy glass schooner caught the man 
who had sneaked up behind the Swede. It 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 208 


struck him in the temple; he reeled and went 
down. The crowd swayed and lurched about 
the saloon. Grunts, groans, curses resounded. 
The Bellport men though outnumbered were 
holding their own and better. They formed 
a more compact group than their opponents; 
had more esprit de corps. Isolated in the 
enemy’s territory they felt that they had to 
win. Thus they fought with a desperate en¬ 
ergy denied the man who could if he wished 
step out of the door into the street. But 
their difficulty was that their opponents 
seemed to be indefinitely reinforced. New 
faces constantly appeared. 

Captain Tucker almost winded and consid¬ 
erably sobered by the mental concentration 
demanded by the exigencies of the occasion 
yelled into Gordon’s ear as the latter staggered 
against him stunned for a moment by a clout 
on the jaw, “Got to get gang together. Fight 
way to tug.” 

The word was passed along and the Bell- 
port men gradually gathered into a knot. 
Sorenson was once more on his feet though 
obviously groggy. Blood streamed down his 
face from a cut on his head. They began 
backing out of the door when the clatter of a 


204 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


clanging bell pierced the din of the struggle. 
Two patrol wagons were pulling up to the 
curb. The street seemed suddenly filled with 
blue coats—clubs rose and fell with business¬ 
like precision. The police betrayed no par¬ 
tisanship. Bellport or Hereford meant noth¬ 
ing at the moment. Here was a bar-room 
fight of unusual violence; the thing to do was 
to hit everyone in sight; quell the disturbance; 
fill the patrol wagons and drive off. 

As Gordon lurched out of the saloon a hand 
grasped his collar; his fist shot up instinctively 
. . . missed ... a club fell . . . everything 
went black. His next recallable sensa¬ 
tion was a sense of desperately swimming up¬ 
wards toward the air from a black void in 
which he was suffocating. He came back to 
consciousness to find himself in a patrol wagon 
filled with combatants of both camps who now 
in the face of their common misfortune were 
fraternizing. They pulled up at the station; 
were yanked before the desk sergeant, charges 
preferred, entered, and then hustled below. 

Gordon found himself the sole occupant of 
a cell in shape like a horse stall and about half 
its size. In the dim light which emanated 
from the corridor he discerned a narrow pallet 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 205 


covered with an incredibly dirty comforter. 
He realized that he would in all probability at 
the very worst be kept over Sunday, and 
fined Monday morning. Nevertheless he was 
amazed to discover how the confinement galled 
him. He felt like a trapped animal and 
realized that never before had he appreciated 
the boon of freedom. It was not until from a 
neighboring cell he heard McTighe’s voice 
raised in a dismal rendition of “My Wild 
Irish Rose” that the humor of the situation 
struck him, and he laughed aloud. 

“Zat you, parson?” called McTighe. “I 
niver tought you’d come to an end like this. 
But I must say you put up a grand fight. I 
seen you paste the Portagee in the guts.” 

Then by calling one to another they took 
a census, discovering that Sorenson, McTighe, 
O’Hearn, Flannery and Gordon were appar¬ 
ently the only Bellport men caught in the 
drag-net. Followed much speculation as to 
their probable fates which ranged from Soren¬ 
son’s pessimistic prediction of thirty days on 
the rockpile to McTighe’s hope that “bein’ 
mostly Irishmen the police would be aisy on 
em. 

“But it’s a shame that the parson should 


206 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


be here with all us drunken scoundrels,” 
he asserted, “an’ him tryin’ to keep the peace 
and spare ol’ Tucker a lickin’. Whin they see 
him and how he’s a gintleman an’ all, sure 
they’ll let him off. Though I’m free to say 
he fought like a demon.” 

The night seemed endless but eventually 
the gray light of the dawn, obscene in that 
setting, revealed the bleak filth of their Dante- 
like surroundings. At last a quiet, competent- 
looking man in his forties appeared. He was, 
it developed, the probation officer. Gordon 
could hear McTighe indignantly explaining 
the outrage of Gordon’s imprisonment, “an’ 
him drivin’ by in his automobile and seem’ 
us wild wit the drink and cornin’ in to stop the 
row and endin’ up in jail. It’s a wicked 
shame, Mr. Officer.” 

“Mr. Gordon?” the man stood at the cell 
door. 

“Yes. I heard McTighe pleading my case. 
He’s right enough, though I must admit that 
after the fight started I was in it.” 

“Evidently,” the stranger laughed. Gor¬ 
don’s collar was hanging, a torn rag, his cravat 
had disappeared. He unlocked the door and 
Gordon stepped out. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 207 


‘Til have to hold the others,” he explained, 
“though as all your men are first offenders, 
in Hereford at least, the Judge will probably 
give them only a five or ten dollar fine. Per¬ 
haps you’d better arrange to have the money 
in the courtroom to-morrow morning.” 

Gordon shook hands with his men; promised 
to be on hand next day and discovered him¬ 
self blinking in the bright sunshine of a warm 
Sunday morning. A street car took him to 
the scene of conflict where he found his auto¬ 
mobile, which fortunately he had locked upon 
leaving, standing unharmed before the saloon. 
He was able to secure a fresh collar at the 
hotel where he breakfasted and after a bath 
and shave was once more fairly presentable. 
The lump on his head was covered by his hat. 

It was a sufficiently respectable looking 
individual who drove up to Mrs. Hale’s at 
about church time, although he felt wan and 
leaden from lack of sleep. 

“Land sakes, Mr. Gordon, whatever hap¬ 
pened last night? Captain Tucker comes 
creakin’ in ’round daylight and ain’t up yet. 
Just groaned when I knocked an’ told him 
breakfast was ready. An’ they say the tug 
come home without Cap’n Sorenson an that 


208 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


they’d been a tumble fracas over in Hereford 
an’ how the*police had to be called out an’ some 
says the militia, an’ how a lot o’ your men is in 
prison an’ goodness knows w r hat! What’s a 
body to believe?” Mrs. Hale’s greeting as 
Gordon mounted the porch steps. Phyllis, 
winsome in a light summer frock, coming out 
at the moment, he sat down and told the two 
women the story. 

Mrs. Hale’s pleasure in the recital was ob¬ 
vious from her expressions of shocked incred¬ 
ulous horror. “Well, did you ever! Why, 
Mr. Gordon! Think of that!” and a strange 
tzutting of her tongue. But Phyllis was 
silent. She looked as though she were listen¬ 
ing to an account of life among the Yahoos by 
a returned traveler. 

It was not until having slept until nearly 
four o’clock that Gordon learned her reaction. 
Coming downstairs, refreshed, he suggested 
a walk. Captain Tucker had arisen at about 
one o’clock, refused food, and tottered out to 
the quarry. 

“Poor old Captain Tucker,” remarked Gor¬ 
don. “He is too old for such junkets. He 
won’t be himself for a week.” 

They were seated beneath an ancient elm 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 209 


on the brink of an abandoned quarry. Phyllis 
withdrew her hand. Her face stiffened. “I 
confess I can’t see anything funny in that 
occurrence. I think it was disgraceful and I 
can’t see, Douglas, why you had to be mixed up 
in it. You might have been killed, or killed 
someone. Why didn’t you just drive on when 
you saw they were all drunk?” 

“Well, I can’t say that I helped very much. 
But somehow I felt a certain responsibility. 
They’re my gang, you know. And the old 
clan instinct probably was a factor.” His 
tone was mildly apologetic. 

“That is the strangest thing to me. How 
can you recognize any bond with men like that; 
drinking, swearing, dissolute quarrymen?” 
Phyllis looked puzzled, pained, and a bit in¬ 
dignant. “I believe it’s a pose. It’s absurd, 
a man of your fine instincts and sensitiveness. 
As for that old reprobate Tucker, you know 
how I disapprove of him. And sure enough 
he was responsible for it.” 

“But don’t you see, dear, these men are fine 
—underneath—finer in many ways than most 
men of more education. They’re less politic, 
more genuine. Take Captain Tucker—” but 
Gordon ceased. Something warned him of 


210 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


the hopelessness of converting her to his view¬ 
point. She was a snob, not a money snob nor 
a blood snob, but a manners-and-morals, 
culture snob. 

“It’s just the woman of it,” Gordon re¬ 
flected patiently. “Of course, their standards 
are different.” And if the thought of another 
woman who would have understood came to 
him, it was promptly effaced by the sweetness 
of the kiss Phyllis yielded as a token of her 
faith in their ultimate agreement. 

Secretly Phyllis viewed Gordon’s easy Bo- 
hemianism and instinctive unconventionality 
as a mere lack of sophistication which would 
be overcome by contact with her quite ob¬ 
viously more correct standards. That the 
pint measure was criticizing the quart for not 
conforming was a conception which could 
never occur to her. 


CHAPTER XXII 


Gordon was filling his radiator preparatory to 
starting off for a Sunday with Phyllis along 
the New Hampshire shore roads when a smart 
racy-looking roadster drove up. It was Pa¬ 
tricia. Phyllis was in the house putting up 
their lunch so, perhaps happily, missed their 
meeting. For Gordon’s face, always easily 
read, beamed like the July sun. 

“This is Mr. Beaudry, I suppose,” and he 
shook hands with the scrupulously dressed 
man who shared the seat. Patricia was at the 
wheel. Phyllis coming out at the moment 
was then introduced. 

“Come along in my car,” suggested Gordon. 
“We’ll just fill another basket with some of 
Mother Hale’s sandwiches and things, and 
make a day of it.” 

“An inspiration!” Patricia characteristi¬ 
cally ignored her companion in her decision and 
drove her car into Mrs. Hale’s barn. A few 
minutes later found them whizzing northward, 
Gordon driving, Phyllis beside him, their 
211 


212 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


guests in the tonneau. Gordon with mascu¬ 
line density wondered that Phyllis should be 
so demonstrative; Phyllis who had kissed him 
but twice before others, who was morbidly 
sensitive about a display of affection. Now 
she was nestling close, almost dangerously so, 
considering his responsibility as pilot. 

Patricia promptly grasped the situation. 
“Wants me to realize the changed status,” she 
reflected. “And isn’t she beautiful? but so 
coldly so.” Then, so strangely are we con¬ 
stituted, “Anyway I was the first woman he 
ever kissed.” 

“A week ago this morning I was just com¬ 
ing out of jail,” and Gordon told them of the 
episode, embroidering it so fancifully that even 
Phyllis joined in their laughter. 

“I suppose you have a pretty tough class of 
men to handle in your line of work,” suggested 
Beaudry. They had pulled up for a moment 
for a vista of cliff and sunlit cove. 

“No,” Gordon replied after a minute’s re¬ 
flection, “I don’t believe there are any tough 
classes. There are tough individuals in every 
stratum; essentially brutal. Often they’re at¬ 
tracted to work which is likely to supply an 
outlet for their instincts, such as strike- 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 213 


breaking or the New York police force. I 
met a well-dressed man, a banker, in the Pull¬ 
man smoker coming on from New York this 
spring, who was fundamentally tougher than 
any of my men: wanted to string up all labor 
leaders by the thumbs, or so he said. And one 
of the gentlest men I’ve ever seen was an ex¬ 
railroad fireman, now a reformer.” He named 
the man Patricia and he had heard speak. 

“Why, Douglas, that man is a menace!” ex¬ 
claimed Phyllis peremptorily; “a demagogue! 
They jailed him in Chicago years ago in a 
great strike.” 

“How tactless!” Gordon pretended to be 
serious. “Don’t you imagine I’m sensitive?” 

“Sincere perhaps but surely misguided,” 
suggested Beaudry suavely. 

“Misguided according to our lights per¬ 
haps,” broke in Patricia. “And our lights 
are carefully trimmed to serve our interests. 
I heard him one night with Douglas and I’ve 
never been the same since.” 

“But to get back to the subject,” and Gor¬ 
don began a rambling account of a quaint char¬ 
acter who had once wandered into a construc¬ 
tion camp of his in the West, and who turned 
out to be an amateur evangelist. Feeling a 


214 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

responsibility as host, he successfully steered 
the conversation into less controversial chan¬ 
nels. But fundamental antagonisms have a 
way of cropping up despite tacit compromises 
to suppress them. 

They stopped for lunch on the shores of a 
pebbly cove. Their appetites sharpened by 
the keen salt air, they devoured Mrs. Hale’s 
sandwiches and apple pie with enthusiasm. A 
thermos supplied coffee. After which Gor¬ 
don lighted his pipe and Beaudry, producing 
a heavy silver case embossed with the Beaudry 
arms, offered the girls cigarettes. Phyllis’s 
refusal was delivered with what seemed to 
Gordon a pharisaical air, particularly in view 
of Patricia’s prompt acceptance. 

“Come now, Phyllis,” objected Gordon ban- 
teringly, “we don’t demand that you smoke 
but don’t be unco guid about it.” 

“I’m not unco guid,” protested Phyllis. “I 
just don’t like cigarettes. Why deliberately 
invite a habit which I’ve never acquired? 
And it’s not so easy to break it.” She turned 
to Patricia for confirmation. 

“Pay no attention to that man,” Patricia 
advised. “He’s tiresome in his rigid uncon¬ 
ventionality. You can always forecast his at- 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 215 


titude. Nor is that all I have against him. 
The capacity of hating people was left out of 
him. It is, therefore, no compliment to have 
him like you.” 

Gordon grinned good-naturedly behind his 
briar. “I suppose you’re hardened against 
her attacks,” he turned to Beaudry who lay 
on his back, head clasped between his hands. 
“She leaves one no illusions about oneself.” 

“Enfant terrible. But I’ll reform her,” he 
asserted with mock severity. “She’s been 
spoiled.” 

Beneath the flickering surface of their talk, 
however, were obscurely felt undercurrents. 
Beaudry was feeling vaguely that it was odd 
that in their relationship he and Patricia had 
never achieved the note of easy uncritical cam¬ 
araderie which plainly marked the bond be¬ 
tween her and Gordon. Attracted by Patri¬ 
cia’s beauty and popularity he had been 
drawn into her orbit by these attributes, to be 
held by her fresh, direct unspoiled outlook. 

Beaudry valued himself highly. The only 
son in a family of four girls, he had been a 
serious student at Yale, contemptuous of the 
pagan, pleasure-seeking standards of his en¬ 
vironment. In a period when athletics were 


216 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


the road to preferment and to gain one’s Y 
was equivalent to an order of knighthood, he 
had sought and secured a magna cum and a 
Phi Beta Kappa key. His sport had been 
fencing which he practised for exercise not 
honors. Upon leaving college he had wished 
to pursue a scholar’s career and dreamed of 
historical studies covering the mediaeval pe¬ 
riod, to bear fruit eventually in thick tomes; 
but duty, called him to his place in the old 
established house of Beaudry and Company, 
Bankers and Brokers. It was his earnestness 
and finely disciplined mind which had at¬ 
tracted Patricia. Her mother had been de¬ 
lighted as an alliance with the Beaudry clan 
marked a decided upward step for the Kellers. 

To Patricia, Beaudry’s contempt for the 
standards of family and money, which seemed 
so important to her mother, indicated in¬ 
dependence and firmly rooted democracy. 
Only recently had she discovered that he too 
was an exclusionist but by a different scale of 
values. Intellect was Allen Beaudry’s yard¬ 
stick, a less ignoble standard than the more 
usual but still, she felt, a limitation. 

Patricia’s reactions were more primitive. 
Engaged to Beaudry and consequently, it was 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 217 


to be assumed, fancy free in other contacts, 
she felt a fierce resentment at Phyllis’s appro¬ 
priation of Gordon. And as she thought it 
over she accused herself. “It isn’t merely 
that I don’t like her . I’d hate any woman 
who had captured him. Why am I such a dog 
in the manger? Do I want both men? Am 
I a polyandrist?” She, too, could not but re¬ 
flect upon the difference between the easy in¬ 
timacy of her relations with Gordon as con¬ 
trasted with her attitude toward Beaudry. 
She was so completely herself with Gordon. 
Between her and Beaudry were mutual re¬ 
spect, sex-pull, congenial interests. “But I 
don’t really feel that I know him and under¬ 
stand him as I do Douglas,” she mused. “I 
wonder if I ever shall? And what is there 
about him that makes me visualize him as 
wearing Aiders’ and a square-topped derby?” 

Phyllis did not conceal from herself her dis¬ 
like of Patricia. She feared her hold upon 
Gordon, disapproved her standards, was hon¬ 
est enough to concede her beauty. “She’s 
cheap and underbred. And because she has 
so much to spend on clothes, probably is pat¬ 
ronizing me inside. And see what a splendid 
fellow she has trapped. I do wish Douglas 


218 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


would be just a bit more dignified and con¬ 
scious of his own qualities.” Beaudry had 
about him an air which reminded her of the 
young dean of her college. And he, to Phyl¬ 
lis, was the ultimate. 

Gordon alone, less prone to self-probing 
than the others, appeared completely content. 
His pride in Phyllis’s beauty was evident nor 
could she help but feel flattered by it. Beau¬ 
dry seemed an admirable chap, far superior to 
the usual run of men in Patricia’s group. 
And to be loafing about in the open with Pa¬ 
tricia again, the woman he loved beside him, 
the woman he most liked opposite, the warm 
sun tempered by the edge of the sea breeze— 
surely this was Nirvana. 

This is a cross section of their reactions at 
a certain plane of consciousness. A plane 
deeper perhaps than most of them cared to 
recognize at the moment, even to themselves. 
And although subtle antagonisms were pres¬ 
ent, as in most human relations, they at least 
found each other interesting—even stimulat¬ 
ing. It was with the promise of a later re¬ 
union that Patricia and Beaudry drove off 
through the mellow twilight. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 219 


With an air of maternal tolerance Phyllis 
turned to Gordon as their guests swept around 
a turn in the road. “She has charm, I’ll con¬ 
fess, but you men can’t read a girl like that 
as a woman can. Mr. Beaudry is too good 
for her.” 

“That’s a very nice fellow,” observed Beau¬ 
dry. “But they seem oddly paired. The girl 
is so—what shall I say? So provincial some¬ 
how, with her primness and regard for the 
proprieties. And he’s so relaxed and Bohe¬ 
mian that I imagine he’s incapable even of 
feeling and resenting her conventionality. I 
suppose he fell for her beauty. I didn’t real¬ 
ize how well you knew him.” 

Patricia was silent a moment, intent upon 
edging past a large van which droned clum¬ 
sily along ahead. 

“Yes, we used to trot about last winter,” 
she explained and went on to tell of some of 
their joint expeditions. “But I agree with 
you—they are not adapted to each other. 
She’ll try to reform him and it’s hopeless. He 
doesn’t resent the world’s standards; he ig¬ 
nores them. I suppose she’ll want to make 


220 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 


him a success and nothing would bore him 
more. He’s tremendously interested in his 
work but has no financial ambition whatever, 
that is, so far as I’ve ever discovered. Dad 
says he’s revolutionized the operation of the 
business.” 

“I wonder he didn’t fall in love with you,” 
Beaudry eyed her keenly. “It’s an easy thing 
to do, you know; at least it was for me.” 

Patricia’s face was impassive in profile. 

“No, he’s not susceptible. And I’m just 
wondering how and why that girl got him. 
She heartily disapproved of me, I don’t know 
why. I suppose to her I must appear bold 
and forward.” 

“Perhaps she thought that Gordon had 
cared for you,” he flung out the suggestion 
impersonally. 

“No, it’s just that a girl of her type resents 
everyone, man or woman, who was a friend of 
‘her man’s’ before she got her clutches on him.” 

Beaudry laughed at the phrase. “I sup¬ 
pose she refers to you as having got your 
clutches on me,” he suggested. His blue eyes, 
a cold blue some people called them, twinkled 
behind his eyeglasses. 

“Well, I have,” confessed Patricia; “or 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 221 


hope I have! The first time I saw you in the 
lobby of the Poinciana surveying that crowd 
of over-dressed, overfed, affected, competitive 
creatures who represent American success, I 
liked you. Your face was a study, that de¬ 
tached expression of scientific curiosity as 
though they were under your microscope. 
Remember? I had Billy Shatter bring you 
over.” 

“Yes, and you said, ‘What are you doing in 
this place? Writing a monograph on the 
manners and customs of the genus million- 
ensis?’ I thought it keen that you should 
have read my thoughts before I’d said a word. 
Also flattering.” 

“And I said, ‘So this is our aristocracy. 
At least the society editors say so.’ ” 

“Well, we have an aristocracy, I suppose,” 
Beaudry suggested, “but that isn’t it. It is 
comprised of the people, generally of the mid¬ 
dle class economically, whose creed is that of 
Channing’s ‘Symphony.’ Recall it? To live 
content with small means, to seek wealth not 
riches and so on? Genuine people whose 
aspirations are intellectual and ethical; not 
social and financial, and who try to impress no 
one, not even themselves. 


222 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


“They possess a social sense, a realization 
that citizenship carries obligations as well as 
privileges. Isn’t that our aristocracy?” 

“Perhaps so,” she assented. “That scale of 
values is certainly superior to the shoddy os¬ 
tentation of money and family, for family is 
merely money again, a generation or two re¬ 
moved. To be born a patrician merely means 
that one’s forebears were climbers. But I 
feel somehow that even the standards you’ve 
just expounded connote limitation. Take Mr. 
Gordon, for example. He seems to exclude 
no one. One would say that he must have 
some standards but I’ve never been able to 
discover them, except that naturally enough 
he prefers genuine people to poseurs. Yet, 
strangely, I’ve seen many posing people drop 
their pose when they met him.” 

“I’m an optimist,” asserted Beaudry. 
“When I observe the people of sixty and over, 
particularly, if you’ll forgive my lack of chiv¬ 
alry, the women—so artificial and full of pre¬ 
tensions—and compare them with the younger 
generation, I take hope. Jazz, cigarettes, 
cocktails, laxness, noisiness and all: I accept 
them. These are but defects of their quali¬ 
ties. We’re breeding real people at least; 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 228 


people who are more honest with themselves 
and each other. I recall a short story in 
Scribner's, ‘Each in His Generation,’ it was 
called, which epitomized the situation.” By 
the time he had relayed the tale they were 
pulling up before the Tudor Arms. 

“Just in time for dinner,” Patricia said. 
“How I hate hotel cooking. I’d like to be sit¬ 
ting down to Mrs. Hale’s table. That apple 
pie!” 

“And she remains a widow!” exclaimed 
Beaudry incredulously. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


“So Major Parsons is coming Wednesday.” 
Captain Tucker picked up Gordon’s pouch 
from his desk and filled his pipe. “One of the 
chilliest propositions I ever met. I knew it 
the first time I ever saw him just from his 
make-up. He wears two little white siders, 
fenders I call ’em. And he never takes a 
drink, a smoke, or uses any but sewing circle 
language. But he’s in charge of the North¬ 
eastern Department and is Denton’s boss, so 
we’ll have to give him the glad hand. Guess 
he’ll find everything up to specifications. 
We’ll ship our fifteen thousand tons this 
month, won’t we, Parson?” 

“A trifle more.” Gordon consulted a tabu¬ 
lated slip which he extracted from a drawer. 
“But that’s sub-rosa, Captain. For some rea¬ 
son or other Mr. Keller seems secretive about 
these tonnage figures. Warned me last sum¬ 
mer never to divulge them outside the family; 
that’s you and me and Jerry. And of course 
Mr. Denton here.” 


224 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 225 


Tucker nodded, v “Yes, I know, he tipped 
me off too.” 

“Least said, soonest mended,” asserted 
Denton acridly. He sat gazing out a seaward 
window which commanded a view of the dock, 
busy this summer morning with its carloads 
of granite running out to the waiting dump 
scow in monotonous succession. 

“That’s your motto, all right, ain’t it, 
Denton? I never knew you to use three 
words where two would do.” “The man of 
mystery” was the phrase he had coined for 
him due to the inspector’s taciturn monosyl¬ 
labic manner of speech. 

Denton disdained to reply. A half hour 
later, alone in the office, he picked up the tele¬ 
phone. “Hello . . . Western Union? Wire 
for New York, collect. John R. Keller. 
. . . get it? care of Keller Construction Com¬ 
pany, 8 West Fortieth Street. Yes . . . 
Fortieth. Ready? Parsons due Wednesday. 
Act accordingly. Rogers.” He listened in¬ 
tently while it was repeated, then rang off. 

“Well, what do you suppose the old man 
wants now?” Gordon and Captain Tucker 
were seated in the smoker speeding south¬ 
wards. “Let’s see that wire again.” He 


226 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

spread out the crackling surface and read it 
carefully hoping to discover the solution. 

“Meet me Hotel Touraine ten am Wednesday 
bring Tucker. Keller.” 

“Give it up. Perhaps he’s planning to bid 
on the Connecticut River jetties.” They 
fell to discussing the facilities for handling that 
project. Arrived at the North Station, they 
took the subway and entered the lobby of the 
hotel at ten minutes before the hour. There 
was Keller, his red face dimly discernible in a 
haze of cigar smoke, scanning the morning’s 
issue of the New York Times. 

“By the way, Major Parsons is due to-day.” 
Captain Tucker informed him after some talk 
about the shipment of an additional traveling 
crane from a Southern job. 

“Parsons due, eh? Well, the gov’ment’s 
never had to kick about any of our work. 
Keller began to tell them about the successful 
application of some of Gordon’s innovations 
to the Gulf job. 

“Miss Patricia was down Sunday with her 
beau,” remarked Tucker after a pause. “I 
seen her for a minute at Miss Hale’s. Said 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 227 


she’d brought him down for my endorsement. 
A Mr. Brodie.” 

“Beaudry,” corrected Keller with a laugh. 
“Yes, and I think she’s picked a good one. 
He’s a solid sensible fellow with a fine educa¬ 
tion. Beaudry & Company, one of the old 
landmarks of Wall Street. I suspected 
Wellington was kind of sweet on her there at 
one time, but I guess he didn’t measure up.” 

“And how’s Clifford?” 

“That boy!” Keller smiled ruefully. 
“Well, Captain, you’ve been a Keller Con¬ 
struction man for over twenty years. You 
went through two crashes with me and I don’t 
forget that you voluntarily went along with¬ 
out a cent of pay for over a year. But I can’t 
see you ever working for Cliff. He ain’t an 
outdoor man; that’s the truth of it. He’ll 
wind up as a lawyer or some such grafting 
game as that, where they get paid for what 
they’ve learned out of books. Gets good 
marks at college though and lives inside his 
allowance. To tell you the truth, I believe 
he’s accumulating a bank account. It ain’t 
natural, is it?” 

Tucker laughed. “Takes all kinds, Mr. 
Keller. He’ll probably wind up as a corpora- 


228 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

tion lawyer and make a dollar where you do 
a dime. And no worries either.” 

“Well, you can size him up shortly. My 
wife and Pat are down at Jasmine now, as you 
know. Cliff will be along shortly and I’ll be 
down in a couple of weeks. But let s go up 
to my room. I want to go over the specifica¬ 
tions on the Connecticut River jetties with 
you.” 

For the next two hours they were deeply in¬ 
volved in matters technical. “You see,” ex¬ 
plained Keller, “this point I’ve bought is only 
twenty miles distant. I told em I was think¬ 
ing of building a summer hotel. Didn’t tell 
’em it was for Romans though. It offers 
good shelter for the floating stock. Now 
McCann &; Cook handled the last installment 
at $3.46 a ton but lost money on it. They’ll 
hid higher this time.” So they threshed it 
out, although as both counsellors knew, Keller 
would make up his own mind at the last 
minute. 

“Well, how about this afternoon? Let’s 
make a day of it.” Keller leaned back in his 
chair inhaling the first few puffs of his after¬ 
luncheon cigar. “It’s pretty hot. Let’s go 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 229 


down to some beach resort by boat for a shore 
dinner. You can get an evening train for 
Bellport and I’ll go back to New York on the 
midnight.” 

“It’s a temptation, though if we go back 
now we might see Parsons before he leaves.” 
Gordon glanced at Tucker. 

“Oh, bother Parsons! He’s an old fuddy- 
duddy anyway. O’Hearn and Denton can 
show him the whole works. You’re too con¬ 
scientious, Gordon.” Keller’s grin was ir¬ 
resistible. 

A taxi took them to the wharf on Atlantic 
Avenue where they boarded the Nantasket 
boat. Gordon who had never been down Bos¬ 
ton harbor surveyed the surroundings with in¬ 
terest. The skyline astern with its one sky¬ 
scraper, the Custom House tower, dominating 
all the horizon, prompted Keller’s explanation 
that a local ordinance forbade high buildings, 
a law to be transcended only by a federal 
structure. “It’s a quaint old museum of a 
town. While the New Englanders are study¬ 
ing their genealogies, the Irish run its politics. 
Give me little ol’ New York.” 

A swim whetted their appetites for dinner, 


230 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


over which they lingered so long that they 
barely caught the theatre train at the North 
Station. 

“Well, Captain, what is it now?” chaffed 
Gordon after a long silence in which Tucker 
had sat with knitted brows. 

“Oh, nothing in particular,” then after a 
pause, “Only there was something more be¬ 
hind this jaunt to-day than appears on the sur¬ 
face. Looks to me as though someone, for 
some reason, didn’t want us, you and me, to 
be in contact with old Major Parsons. Now 
why?” 

“Wake me up when you get it, Captain.” 
Gordon promptly fell asleep to awaken with 
a start at the conductor’s shout, “Bell- 
port, Bellport! All out! End of the line! 
Bellport!” 


CHAPTER XXIV 


‘‘Douglas, I can’t bear to think of going. 
Isn’t there some way out of it? I just know 
that Mrs. Keller is an impossible, purse-proud, 
pseudo-cultured creature. Patricia and I 
haven’t really anything in common. They’ll 
be patronizing in their attitude, and I’ll make 
sneering remarks about the nouveaux riche as 
a consequence. And to dine with them and 
spend a whole evening! It’s horrible. Be¬ 
sides I have nothing to wear.” 

Phyllis jabbed her pen viciously into the 
blotter which lay before her on the table. 
They were seated in a little, top-story room 
which Mrs. Hale had turned over to her for 
a study. The calm quietude of the summer 
evening contrasted oddly with the air of ten¬ 
sion which hung over them. 

“Oh, come now. The Kellers are all right. 
It’s out of the goodness of her heart that Mrs. 
Keller has invited us. You see, I’m a kind of 
friend of the family as well as employee. I 
hate to offend them. Don’t worry about 

231 


232 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 


clothes. You know what a summer hotel is 
these days. Half the women will dash in off 
the links in sport clothes.” For some minutes 
they argued the point until finally with a 
“Well, I suppose being engaged implies ob¬ 
ligations as well as privileges,” Phyllis sub¬ 
mitted. She held her left hand toward the 
light so that the diamond catching its rays 
sparkled brilliantly. She had not yet achieved 
the nonchalantly unconscious air regarding it 
which she sought to acquire. 

To Gordon Phyllis looked regal as she came 
down the stairs the following evening dressed 
for the Kellers’ affair. Her dainty summer 
dinner frock seemed to him completely appro¬ 
priate, but he concluded that his masculinely 
obtuse vision blinded him to its drawbacks. 
Truth to tell, it was a charming gown; Phyl¬ 
lis’s objection had on that count been merely 
a subterfuge. He had slipped into a dinner 
coat and from Mrs. Hale their festive appear¬ 
ance evoked an exclamation of admiration. 

“You certainly make a likely looking pair,” 
she averred with enthusiasm. “I knew how 
’twould be, long before either of you two.” 
And she cackled a triumphant cackle. 

“That’s right,” confirmed Captain Tucker 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 233 


who sat smoking his pipe, huge feet elevated 
upon the porch rail. “Miss Hale told me all 
about it long ago. And I laughed at her, 
knowin’ the parson’s ways.” 

“You may know Mr. Gordon but I knew 
human nature.” Mrs. Hale shook her head 
sapiently, her round, good-humored be¬ 
spectacled face with its quaint little button of 
a nose beaming approval upon her handiwork. 
“And I guess they ain’t made no mistake.” 

Phyllis flushed with irritation. These pub¬ 
lic discussions of private affairs tried her. 

“Advantages or not I should think people 
would have perceptions sufficiently sensitive to 
avoid that sort of thing,” she exclaimed pet¬ 
tishly as they drove off. 

“Why, they are two of the best-hearted 
folks you ever met,” defended Gordon. 
“Don’t let their simple unsophistication get on 
your nerves.” Then, turning in his seat to 
survey her, “You’re simply the most gor¬ 
geous thing to-night that I ever looked at,” he 
exclaimed with solemn emphasis. Phyllis col¬ 
ored with pleasure. For a girl of her striking 
beauty she was oddly unconscious of it, but 
she nevertheless appreciated this tribute to her 
appearance. 


234 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 


“Love is blind,” she replied softly. 

They talked of her work and his, of their 
plans for an autumn wedding. “You must 
arrange to come out to visit my people some 
time in August even if only for a couple of 
days,” she announced. “I’ve written them 
all about you but you may imagine their curi¬ 
osity. It would be an ordeal for most men 
but you won’t mind it. You’re so free from 
self-consciousness. How my sisters will stare 
and chatter. And Dad. He’ll be relieved at 
your theological condition. He’s a Unitar¬ 
ian, you know. Your all-inclusive tolerance 
will appeal to him.” 

So she ran on until, the hotel glimpsed 
through the trees, she fell silent. Unaccus¬ 
tomed to social intercourse both by personal 
predilection and limited opportunity, she 
feared she would feel stiff and constrained. 
And with a bride’s jealousy of her lover’s past 
she resented Gordon’s personal contact with 
the Kellers. Patricia she felt intuitively to 
be an actual menace. It was with a smile 
painfully assumed that she underwent the in¬ 
troduction formula. Clifford, arrived the 
day previous, eyed her with instant approval. 
John Keller, bluff and off-hand as usual, re- 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 235 


marked sotto voce, “And they say engineers 
lack aesthetic perceptions.” Mrs. Keller was 
sufficiently cordial, her society manner relaxed 
as always under the impact of Gordon’s direct 
personality. Beaudry and Patricia, who ar¬ 
rived warm from the links after the group had 
been seated, greeted her gaily. 

From time to time visitors whom Gordon 
had met the previous summer would stop to 
greet him in passing their table. Madge Cul¬ 
ver was in Europe but Jack Ingersoll hailed 
him enthusiastically. Old Mrs. Grimshaw 
stopped for a moment, and Pamela Caldwell 
in her usual hyperbolic fashion screamed that 
he was “just a love” to let them see him again. 
Which, though she herself felt it to he unrea¬ 
sonable, all gave Phyllis a sense of isolation, of 
being an outsider. She could, however, she 
had to confess, discern no signs of patron¬ 
age and abandoned her plan of a vigorous 
offensive. 

Secure in her consciousness of superior cul¬ 
ture, an advantage she knew was shared by 
Beaudry and Gordon, she had contemplated 
involving them in a conversation which would 
leave the rest of the party hopelessly stranded 
on the shoals of the crassly concrete. What- 


236 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


ever unpleasant elements might have been in¬ 
jected by the conflicting standards of her host¬ 
ess and herself were completely buried by the 
frank good humor of the group. John Kel¬ 
ler, in high spirits, asserted that blessed with a 
charming blonde daughter of whom he was 
duly appreciative, he had always coveted a 
brunette, and proposed to adopt Phyllis. 

“My father would have something to say,” 
she retorted spiritedly. 

“But you confess to three sisters. He 
could spare one of you.” 

“A good scheme,” broke in Clifford. “We 
need Miss Winslow to balance the family. 
Pat’s too harum scarum and has no poise. It 
would be a good influence for her.” 

“But is she amenable, Cliff?” inquired 
Beaudry seriously. “Your dignified, even 
impressive, personality doesn’t seem to have 
benefited her.” 

“The old case of the prophet,” was Clif¬ 
ford’s airy verdict. “Napoleon’s mother al¬ 
ways thought him merely a fool for luck.” 

After dinner the two couples strolled over 
to the grounds of a neighboring hostelry in 
which a bazaar for the benefit of a local charity 
was in operation. They tried their luck with 


PATRICIA S AWAKENING 237 


skee balls, tested their strength, and finally 
coming to the booth of a palmist, entered. 

“Nathalie Herrick says she’s really wonder¬ 
ful,” Patricia informed them. “She’s a Rus¬ 
sian, a Baroness Sokoloff. Her husband’s in 
the embassy at Washington. Here, Allen, 
we’ll give her no clues,” and slipping off her 
engagement ring, she gave it to Beaudry who 
put it into his waistcoat pocket. Phyllis fol¬ 
lowed suit. 

“It ees de troot what I tell,” said the seer, 
darkly handsome in her barbaric gypsy cos¬ 
tume, as the four crowded in, Patricia seat¬ 
ing herself and extending her palm. The 
woman’s words were accompanied by a ques¬ 
tioning glance at the presence of the group. 
“You no care?” 

“Shoot,” exclaimed Patricia. “If they can 
stand it, I can,” and she laughed with a hint 
of bravado. 

“Ze past an’ ze futoor, I tell,” she said ab¬ 
stractedly as she studied first one palm then 
the other. “Many lovers have you had, what 
you call . . .” she hesitated, groping for the 
phrase in English, “light o’ lofes, pas serieuoc. 
Your nature is . . . what you denote—” she 
paused, “im-petuous,” she pronounced it with 


238 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

the meticulous care of the foreigner. As with 
all Russian patricians, French w l as her cus¬ 
tomary tongue. 

“You do not seek advice. You act wit’ ze 
impulse. Ver’ frank, ver’ brave, by nature 
you scorn ze conventione. Lofe you crave; 
you hunger for ze grand lofe . . . what you 
call a nature passionment. An’ lofe you will 
ver’ quick find but . . . not yet—though you 
know it not. Of children, I see two. Of 
marriage I see but one, and that when you are 
of age . . . eight and twenty. Of happiness 
much. It is a life fortunate. Of money not 
great deal but ’nuff. You care not for money 
and le monde. Now for ze past to proof de 
troot. At fifteen, ver’ ill. At thirteen 
great confusion in finance—your family I 
mean. Both father and mother now live. 
One brother—less old. Ver’ quick . . . great 
misfortune for all. But out of it come joy 
to you. ’Nuff?” She looked up. 

Patricia withdrew her hands quickly. 
“Plenty,” she replied, and Phyllis seated her¬ 
self in the chair she vacated. 

“Ev’ting joost oppose,” she affirmed after 
a moment’s scrutiny. “I mean ze char’ctaire. 
You tink long time ’fore speak. Ver’ conven- 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 239 


tionale. Talent I see, perhaps with pen. 
Fame too. A nature repressed, reserved. 
Affaires de coeurV* She shrugged her shoul¬ 
ders. “Not many. You desire them not. 
Ver’ ambitious; you aspire intellect—” she 
concluded, laughing at her own philological 
limitations. “Long time finance was bad,” 
she continued, “but that eez gone for always. 
Ver’ hono’ble nature. Like illustrious, great 
founder of country, cannot tell lie. ’Bout 
past . . . not many events. Several other 
children, you oldest. You travel good deal 
sometime; not much yet. ’Bout marriage 
. . . yes . . . when ’round thirty. One child. 
A life sufficient good. No great sadness, no 
great . . . what you call, ’static happiness.” 
She looked up as Beaudry succeeded her last 
subject. 

“You no believe,” she challenged as she 
noted his smile. “I make you admit.” For 
some minutes she studied his palms, first the 
right then the left. “Now ’bout past. I say 
one ting false you stop me. It eez com¬ 
pact?” Beaudry nodded. 

“You born ov’seas,” she began, “cannot 
say where but many tousand miles.” A puz¬ 
zled frown appeared on his brow. “You 


240 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

travel place to place as babe an’ little boy, 
then ’bout ten years old long journey 
ov’seas . . . suppose you came dis country. 
’Gain I see long journey when twenty-four 
over water, suppose maybe go back to 
Europe.” She looked up, he nodded. She 
laughed triumphantly. “You want be sa¬ 
vant,” she went on. “All show it, man study 
books, l’histoires, maybe dig up old rum, 
but . . . not to be. You have strong sense 
duty, fam’ly pride. You embark on career 
commercial. I tell de troot?” 

“All true so far,” he confessed with an air 
of having the admission wrenched from him. 

“Now ’bout ze heart. You want de troot?” 

“Go ahead.” 

“One affaire I see at twenty-one. Au 
serieux , but eet pass. No more to count till 
’bout thirty-three or four. Dat pass, too. 
Then at ’bout forty you marry; have of chil¬ 
dren two. It is a calm, what you call a placid 
lofe. No fire . . . but sufficient content. 
You marry but once. Now ’bout traits. I 
see a man who lives in tings of ze mind, man 
who likes not displays nor even power, 
wants quietude—time to read an’ study. Not 
dynamo type like so many ’merican men. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 241 

Some ways like Frenchman. Close bound to 
fam’ly. Strong justice sense. Strong will, 
’special to resist but not type man who be¬ 
longs in world of affaires. Make good pro- 
fesseur. Life on whole not eventful. An 
even, not unhappy life. Plenty money al¬ 
ways . . . good health. An’ now?” She 
turned to Gordon. Beaudry stood scru¬ 
tinizing his own palm with an air of bewil¬ 
derment, seeking to descry in the lines and 
contours the tell-tale evidence. 

Gordon was not smiling. His expression 
was rather one of eager interest. He lacked 
sufficient knowledge of his companions’ pasts 
to check the accuracy of the palmist’s as¬ 
sertions but, a born mystic, there was to him 
nothing incredible about the doctrine of fa¬ 
talism and its corollaries: palmistry, astrology, 
numerology, and so on. There was in fact 
much evidence to support such a philosophy. 

“So?” said the seeress, talking almost as 
though to herself as she perused the life map 
which lay before her. “What ze Orientals 
call old soul, with many, many pur Tying ex¬ 
periences behind. Ze eart’ pull hardly felt. 
He desire little. Money . . . fame . . . 
personal ’chievement ... all gone long time 


242 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

’go. He lofe justice . . . lofes ev’ body. Ze 
self is hardly present.” 

“Highly recommended,” muttered Beaudry. 

“Some send-off!” Gordon’s grin failed to 
disconcert the palmist. 

“Now ’bout events,” her voice took on a 
brisker note. “Travel good deal but not over 
ocean. Both parents gone. All alone. 
Heart line ver’ strange. No lofe affair till 
thirty-six; then . . she leant over his palm 
more intently, “two women. One ze real . . . 
predestined; one not really count. I can t 
quite make out. But you get marry ’bout 
thirty-eight. Two children. Ver’ happy. Oh 
. . . won’erful! Ze grande passion! But ter¬ 
rible time ahead ’fore then. I no like say 
all I see.” She looked helplessly about. 
Then as Gordon bent over, she murmured 
something in his ear. He smiled incredu¬ 
lously. 

“Yes, yes,” she exclaimed aloud. “I see 
it. Beware. Hey plot. All roun’ dark 
forms . . . enemies.” Then shrugging her 
shoulders. “But what use . . . beware? Kis¬ 
met. No one escape. Ze past? I know. 
You know I know. I tol’ you ’nuff.” 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 243 

She dropped his hand. They walked out; not 
one entirely unimpressed. 

“It’s no use falling back on the theory that 
she knows about us personally,” Beaudry 
was first to break a long silence. “She can’t 
have investigated every one along this shore. 
That’s impossible. I don’t mind admitting 
that she was entirely correct about the events 
of my past. I was born in Paris when Dad 
was in charge of our European connections. 
We came back to New York when I was ten, 
just as she said. And again after my gradu¬ 
ation I took a tour abroad when I was twenty- 
four. Wonder if she is clairvoyant; reads our 
pasts and fakes our futures? The character 
interpretation one could impute to intuition, 
but it’s the events which puzzle me.” 

“I don’t know what to think. I can’t 
credit her forecast of the future.” Patricia 
spoke as though determined to doubt. “I 
do believe that regarding the past, perhaps, 
we all carry a scroll of memory, discernible 
to eyes of psychics. There is a vast mass of 
inexplicable psychic phenomena recorded in 
the records of the S. P. R. No one who has 
ever investigated doubts the truth of it, how- 


244 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

ever they may differ regarding the explana¬ 
tion.” 

And so they speculated. Phyllis, though 
inwardly shaken, pretended to be skeptical. 
“Though she did say I was the eldest, as I 
am,” she admitted. 

Gordon refused to commit himself. “I’ll 
report later,” he promised. “She gave me 
some confidential data which if confirmed by 
approaching events will sell me palmistry 
for life.” 

It was not until on the homeward trip, 
that Phyllis, bribing him with kisses, extracted 
the secret from him. “It’s too ridiculous,” he 
exclaimed. “She said that she saw me in a 
court room on trial, and a lot of incredible 
rot.” 

“Now I know it’s all nonsense,” was 
Phyllis’s conclusion. “Still I do hope Patri¬ 
cia cultivates her and finds out more, as she 
said she planned to.” 


CHAPTER XXV 


“Odd, wasn’t it, that you and I should have 
become engaged at almost the same time? 
Everyone considered you an incorrigible 
bachelor.” 

It was evening in a dark and secluded 
corner of the hotel porch. Gordon in re¬ 
sponse to his employer’s summons had driven 
up from the quarry for dinner and, after an 
hour’s earnest business discussion, had been 
waylaid by Patricia, challengingly beautiful 
in her white gown, as he came out of the 
lobby. 

“Do entertain me for a few minutes,” she 
had urged. “Allen was conscripted to fill 
out a bridge foursome. You know how 
cards bore me . . . and here I am—aban¬ 
doned.” Lighting a cigarette, Gordon had 
seated himself beside her in the Gloucester 
hammock, not altogether annoyed by this 
obstacle to his prompt departure. 

“An incorrigible bachelor.” Gordon re¬ 
peated the phrase with amusement. “Who 
245 


246 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 

is it—oh, I remember, it’s Mencken, who pro¬ 
pounds the theory that bachelorhood is a trib¬ 
ute to intelligence, that the less wary succumb 
to feminine wiles while the intellectually fit 
survive the snares.” 

“What piffle! Sounds worthy of a college 
sophomore. Clifford would hail that as a 
sapient saying.” 

“I didn’t say I endorsed it. I’m merely 
quoting.” Gordon laughed. Then turning 
serious. “Yes—it was a coincidence. I am 
sure you’ll be very happy. Beaudry is so ob¬ 
viously a splendid chap and, as you yourself 
said, has character.” 

“I am glad you approve. It would never 
occur to me to care for any one else’s opinion. 
But yours does count for some reason. I 
think I look upon you as an elder brother; 
not in the relation as it generally actu¬ 
ally is, mutual criticism and targets for 
each other’s wit, but as it is theoretically; a 
sincere affection and a certain dependence 
for guidance. You know me well enough to 
realize that I’m not nearly so independent as 
my pose indicates. Nor am I as modern as 
I pretend. I don’t seek a career. At heart 
I’m old fashioned. I want love, and a home 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 247 


to look after—and a man to fuss over.” 
Her voice held a tenderly wistful note 
which touched her listener’s heart strings. 
In this mood the imperious Patricia seemed 
so unutterably appealing and defenseless. 

Imperceptibly she swayed toward him and 
as the night wind softly stirred the honey¬ 
suckle which hung in heavy festoons about 
them, he drew a long breath. The sweetness 
of the flowers merged so delicately into the se¬ 
ductive fragrance which the girl herself ex¬ 
haled, a rare perfume distilled from the es¬ 
sence of the rose gardens of Roumania, that 
to Gordon they were indistinguishable. 
He stirred uneasily. Some impelling power 
seemed to be drawing him closer to her. 

“I don’t see why our friendship should be 
affected by our marriage,” she continued. 
“There’s no reason why it should ... is 
there? You like Allen, and Phyllis is such a 
darling.” 

“Of course not, except one never knows 
where an engineer will locate.” Gordon 
sounded sincere but privately he had mis¬ 
givings, since hearing Phyllis’s comment, 
about a lasting bond between the two girls. 

“Love is life’s greatest experience, tran- 


248 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

scending all others; but friendship is precious 
too. And I do so value ours.” Patricia’s 
voice was surcharged with feeling. From 
the ballroom in another wing came the throb¬ 
bing rhythm of Offenbach’s “Barcarolle.” 
“But our friendship has been so one-sided,” 
she went on. “You have given me so much 
and received so little.” 

“How absurd! What would I have done 
in New York without you? A great city can 
be the loneliest of places. I was lonely 
enough after you went South.” 

“Oh, were you?” Patricia demanded hap¬ 
pily. “You’ve never admitted it.” 

“Of course I was. And lonely up here too. 
I missed you.” He paused. “That is, un¬ 
til Phyllis came,” he added loyally. 

“Oh, yes . . . Phyllis. Now you’ll never 
again be lonely. Nor shall I. For I missed 
you after I left New York. And I so re¬ 
gretted going. But then I met Allen—and 
it was different.” 

They fell silent, the distant throbbing of 
the violins making palpitant the evening 
quietude, with now and then a cricket’s plain¬ 
tive chirrup sounding a sharper note. 

“It was strange, that woman the other eve- 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 249 


ning—wasn’t it?” Patricia’s voice held a 
musing quality as though she were speaking 
to herself. “I meant to cultivate her but she 
has gone to Bar Harbor. She said I’d marry 
in a couple of years but that Allen wouldn’t 
for six. Ridiculous, wasn’t it?” 

“Obviously.” 

“And yet she said so much that was so. It 
was uncanny.” She shivered, her gleaming 
shoulder pressed for a moment against her 
companion. “And she saw us storm-tossed, 
you and I. But she didn’t say whether or 
not it was the same storm. But I thought it 
out afterwards ... it was the same time any¬ 
way.” 

“Dear Patricia ... if trouble—real trouble 
should ever come, you’ll let me know?” His 
voice was grave. “Wherever you or I may 
be?” 

“Yes, Douglas.” She spoke solemnly as 
though making a compact. “Wherever you 
or I may be.” His eyes searched hers deeply 
and for a long moment they seemed each to 
be seeking bravely but futilely to expose their 
inmost selves one to the other. 

Patricia sighed. “Douglas, you’re so stead¬ 
fast. I know if I needed you twenty years 


250 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


from now you’d respond. And I’ve not an 
iota of a claim on you.” 

“We won’t argue it,” he spoke lightly. 
“But I’ll never forget the good times we had 
knocking about all those queer joints last 
winter.” 

“I loved it. I’m afraid that’s one way Al¬ 
len and I are not completely en rapport . 
He’d stand for the political meetings for, as 
you know, he’s far from being a reactionary. 
But all those funny, queer quasi-philosophic 
gatherings which were so deliciously inter¬ 
esting to me; he’d think those utter nonsense. 
You so expanded my horizon. And ever 
since I’ve found life so vastly more interesting. 
You know in a sense Allen can blame my ac¬ 
cepting him to your influence. For I never 
could have seen a man of his type before you 
revised my outlook.” 

“You’re shouldering me with a heavy re¬ 
sponsibility.” 

“Am I not?” Then suddenly turning seri¬ 
ous, she faced him squarely. “Douglas, do 
you think I’ve chosen right?” Her eyes 
bored into his: 

He met her glance steadily but remained 
silent. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 251 


“Patricia—dear—you’ve asked me a 
question which nobody can possibly answer,” 
he finally replied. “Nothing in life is more 
obscure, more hopelessly baffling than love. 
Anyone can see that you were born for a 
great love. May God grant you its happy 
consummation, for, denied it, your life will be 
wrecked. But I cannot answer your question. 
No one can.” 

“No, you are right. No one can.” 

As he stepped off the porch into the cling¬ 
ing fragrance of the July night, she stood, he 
noted, in turning at a bend of the path, mute 
and motionless where he had left her, as 
though lost in contemplation of the problem 
of life . . . and love. 


CHAPTER XXVI 


Gordon’s visit to his fiancee’s family was per¬ 
haps fortunately not of long duration. Un¬ 
der pressure of Mrs. Winslow’s urgent de¬ 
mands, he consented to run the gauntlet at 
once and on a warm July Friday they started 
in Gordon’s car on the five-hour drive to 
Greenmeadow, the little western Massachu¬ 
setts town in which the Reverend Ellery Wins¬ 
low served his pastorate. 

Wearied from their long drive, they rolled 
slowly down the green, shaded by century-old 
elms, and pulled up before the parsonage, a 
quaint white house with green blinds, the roof 
sloping in a long unbroken line downward in 
the rear testifying to its eighteenth century 
origin. They planned to remain Saturday 
and Sunday morning, starting home Sunday 
afternoon. 

Mrs. Winslow met them at the door, her 
face wearing that strange, frosty artificial 
smile which so many women of her period 
fondly imagine betokens cordiality. Her 

252 


PATRICIA S AWAKENING 253 


face was a palimpsest. Profoundly pessi¬ 
mistic, the result perhaps of seeking to 
launch four daughters with a country 
parson’s salary as her sole resource, she was 
convinced that Phyllis, selecting a husband 
independently of her counsel, must inevitably 
have made a serious error. Upon this rec¬ 
ord of disapproval and anxiety was super¬ 
imposed the welcoming smile. She kissed 
Phyllis then, turning to Gordon, pecked him 
in an impersonal fashion as though fearing 
to compromise her judicial position. Gordon, 
to her, was the prisoner at the bar, Phyllis 
counsel for the defense, the family the jury 
and she the judge. The pouches which 
flanked her jaws seemed indeed to lend her a 
magisterial appearance. 

“So this is Douglas!” she exclaimed. “Do 
come in and meet the family. Oh, here’s El¬ 
lery now.” 

Followed by the three girls, Ellery Wins¬ 
low, a frail little wisp of a man with white 
hair, a man Gordon promptly sensed, with a 
dry humor of his own, entered the bleak shabby 
living room. The two men shook hands with 
real cordiality. The girls were presented. 
Barbara, a sophomore at Grantwood, a faintly 


254 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 


pretty girl with blue eyes and hazel hair. 
She looked not in the least like Phyllis. 
Frances, still in high school, in coloring re¬ 
sembling Phyllis but completely missing her 
beauty, and Rosamond, a leggy girl of about 
fourteen, freckled and wholesome looking. 
She giggled, of course, but the two elder sis¬ 
ters surprised Gordon by their poise and dig¬ 
nity. Ordinarily rather careless about his 
dress, Phyllis had spruced him up for the oc¬ 
casion and surveying him in this setting with 
hypercritical eyes, she felt pride in the quiet 
distinction of his appearance. They sat 
down. Trivialities sufficed for conversation: 
their long drive, the rural charm of Green- 
meadow, Phyllis’s “Twilight Tales.” 

“Miss Griscomb is so delighted,” explained 
Mrs. Winslow. “She subscribes to the 
Springfield Union so as to read them every 
day. Says she always asserted you were the 
best pupil she ever had in English composition. 
You must see her before you return.” 

“It’s all due to Douglas,” protested Phyllis. 
“He sold them for me.” 

“Phyllis tells me that you’re a Whithurst 
man,” Mrs. Winslow turned to Douglas. 

“Yes, class of ninety-nine. Then I put in 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 255 


a couple of years at the Michigan School of 
Mines. But I’m hopelessly out of touch with 
my college. Wandering about so much.” 
Gordon had never quite understood the type 
of man who bore a college label to the end of 
his life. Whithurst meant little more to him 
than Williams or Wesleyan or Dartmouth. 
College lay far behind. Many college men 
seemed to him rather childishly college con¬ 
scious. Realizing, however, that Mrs. Wins¬ 
low had probably introduced the subject in the 
hope that he would tell her something of him¬ 
self, he rambled on about his boyhood, his 
father’s hope that he would become a doctor 
and his own bent toward engineering. “You 
see I’m not a commercial type,” he explained. 

Mrs. Winslow, whose face was to Phyllis 
an open book, registered grim disapproval. 
Mr. Winslow was not a “commercial type.” 

“I have to work at something which interests 
me and the business end of contracting doesn’t 
in the least. I fear I’ll never be a big 
operator like Mr. Keller.” 

Phyllis laughed nervously. “But, Douglas, 
you don’t understand Greenmeadow stand¬ 
ards,” she explained. “You earn more now 
than any salaried man in this town.” 


256 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

Mrs. Winslow looked relieved. 

“Come out and stroll round the green,” 
suggested Mr. Winslow who had been sitting 
silent, yielding the helm to his wife as is the 
habit of prospective American fathers-in-law 
at such moments. “We’ve some fine examples 
of eighteenth century architecture and a few 
seventeenth.” 

“Had to smile,” confided the older man 
slouching comfortably along in an unpressed 
Palm Beach suit, pulling at a wheezing briar. 
“Brought back the time I interviewed my 
wife’s folks—let me see—” he paused; 
“twenty-five years ago. And old Ransome 
Edgett was a sarcastic old fellow. You’re 
fortunate, waiting till you’re well established. 
I married when I was only twenty-four and it 
was a mistake in some ways. Hampered me 
so I’ve been buried in obscure pastorates ever 
since. Not that I mind. I’m a good deal of 
a philosopher. But I’m thinking of the girls 
and Alice. I must admit that I’m a failure.” 

“Can’t see it,” objected Gordon. “Your 
standard certainly isn’t financial or you’d never 
have entered this field. I suppose it’s that of 
usefulness. Well, your bank account is no 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 257 


measure of that. Often it’s in inverse ratio.” 
They stopped to admire a beautiful old pre- 
Revolutionary house sleeping peacefully in the 
checkered sunlight which filtered through the 
leaves of the gracious overarching elms. 

“True enough up to a certain point,” con¬ 
ceded Winslow as they walked on, “but a man 
has a duty to his family as well as to the com¬ 
munity. I’ve failed in that aspect. As for 
my work, I’m often skeptical; not merely 
about myself but about the church as an insti¬ 
tution. Few people of vigorous intelligence 
accept it as a spiritual guide. About ethics, 
I’m a fatalist. People are born with them or 
without them. In economics the church is 
hopelessly blind; has no sense of social justice. 
The boards of trustees are supporters of the 
status quo as always. What is it but a social 
center, a kind of sewing circle? I have my 
own convictions about the trend of things to¬ 
day. I realize that the whole system is due 
for a change; I hope a peaceful one. But if 
I preached what I believed from my pulpit 
I’d promptly lose my job, poor as it is.” 

Gordon turned in surprise. Was this 
Phyllis’s father? 


258 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 

“But Phyllis, your daughters, Mrs. Wins¬ 
low—they don’t agree with your viewpoint? 
Though I suspect that I do.” 

“Nobody that I know of for a radius of 
thirty miles does. But I subscribe to some of 
the forward looking weeklies. The girls 
don’t read them.” 

Suddenly a sense of this man’s utter isola¬ 
tion was borne in upon Gordon. They sat 
down upon a stone wall and fell to exchanging 
outlooks. The westering sun had sunk behind 
the trees before Winslow pulled out his watch. 
“This has been great!” he exclaimed. “But 
watch your step with my wife. Anyway until 
after you’ve got Phyllis safely secured. She 
has no use for views like yours and mine. But 
I never would have figured that Phil would 
have brought a chap like you into the family. 
Now you’re here, I say ‘Welcome,’ ” and he 
wrung Gordon’s hand. 

After dinner, a rather dismal repast, due to 
Mrs. Winslow’s obvious anguish over the 
gaucherie of Mrs. Doyle, hired for the occa¬ 
sion, they went for a drive, Gordon, Phyllis, 
Mrs. Winslow and two of the sisters. Frances 
remained to help Mrs. Doyle. Winslow prof¬ 
fered his Sunday’s sermon as an excuse. As 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 259 


they passed the various townsfolk, Gordon 
noted with amusement the elder woman’s grad¬ 
uated scale of bows—ranging from extreme 
cordiality in the case of Mrs. Murray, wife of 
the local mill-owner, to condescending patron¬ 
age of a woman who sat at the wheel of a Ford. 
“A truck gardener’s wife,” she explained. 

Mrs. Winslow was trying to “make out” 
Gordon. She was by no means ready to lend 
him her indorsement. He was altogether too 
fond of a joke and in her mind a sense of hu¬ 
mor too often connoted a lack of serious pur¬ 
pose. She liked a man to be serious and solid. 
“Sound” was her word for the qualities of 
which she approved. Was Gordon sound? 
She questioned it. To be sure he seemed suf¬ 
ficiently prosperous according to Green- 
meadow standards but his attitude toward his 
work was suspicious. The salary seemed but 
incidental to him. She suspected him of flight- 
mess, the quality which had earned her thor¬ 
ough and unshakable disapproval of her 
husband. 

“Such an impractical man,” she often com¬ 
plained, “with no idea of conciliating the in¬ 
fluential people in his church. It’s all right to 
be independent if you can afford to be, but how 


260 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

many can?” Conformity was Mrs. Winslow’s 
ideal and here was another man who like El¬ 
lery seemed indifferent to society’s shibboleths. 
But Phyllis, she reflected, would perhaps re¬ 
form him in this aspect. She had never had 
occasion to criticise her eldest daughter s or¬ 
thodoxy. 

And Gordon too displayed another weak¬ 
ness which too often accompanied humor and 
flightiness. He certainly lacked dignity. In 
pulling up at a garage to secure gasoline he 
had fallen into such easy conversation with the 
person, in unspeakably dirty overalls, who at¬ 
tended to their wants; had even lingered to 
swap Ford stories with the mechanic. Nor did 
he seem to realize that this compromised her 
position as wife of the Reverend Ellery Wins¬ 
low. To cap it all, later, when she had re¬ 
ferred to an elderly gentleman who saluted her 
with old-fashioned formality as “Mr. Horatio 
Aldrich, the local banker . . . such a distin¬ 
guished, dignified man,” he had remarked, 
“What was that line about dignity? Oh yes. 
‘Dignity,’ someone said, ‘is about fifty per cent 
frock coat and fifty per cent whiskers.’ ” 
“You know I can’t help liking Mr. Gordon 
in some ways,” she confided to her spouse that 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 261 


evening in the sanctity of their bedroom, “but 
I do wish he had more sense of dignity and of 
his own importance.” 

It was a familiar phrase to Winslow but, 
fearing to prejudice her against the younger 
man by associating him with himself, he for¬ 
bore to remind her. 


CHAPTER XXVII 


With a stifled groan Gordon awoke from a 
nightmare of such vividness that for a moment 
he could not but believe in its reality. He had 
dreamed that, while he was tied hand and foot 
to his bed, Mrs. Winslow had entered, flung a 
sack over his face, and proceeded to stifle 
him. He reached under his pillow for his 
watch and struck a match. It was five o’clock. 
Breakfast he knew would not be served until 
seven-thirty. He arose, padded noiselessly 
into the bathroom and shaved. He looked 
longingly at the tub but fearing to awaken the 
silent household contented himself with a 
sponge bath. 

By half-past five he was quietly unlocking 
the front door and found himself inhaling deep 
lungfuls of the cool morning air, odorous with 
the scent of phlox and honeysuckle. He de¬ 
tected too the pungent sweetness of mint. He 
turned down the village street, cross-barred at 
frequent intervals by the long shadows cast by 
the rising sun. Save for a boy delivering 
262 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 263 


papers and one lone milkman, the little town 
still seemed asleep. Arousing a drowsy at¬ 
tendant at the garage, he secured his car and 
drove off. He planned to enjoy a leisurely 
twenty-mile spin over country roads before 
breakfast. He had been driving perhaps a 
half hour when, after climbing a hill suffici¬ 
ently steep to force him into second speed, he 
rounded a curve to find spread before him a 
peaceful panorama. The valley lay dreaming 
in the morning coolness, its lush green mead¬ 
ows watered by a silver stream, its eastern 
slopes glistening in the sunshine. Here and 
there a blue smoke wreath ascending vertically 
in the quiet air rose from the chimney of a 
farmhouse. He pulled up. 

“Can one blame the Hudson River school 
for trying to include it all in a single canvas?” 
he reflected. Held by the beauty of the scene 
he sat silent for many minutes. 

A rustling in the brush and suddenly there 
emerged a strange creature. A dog doubtless, 
but such a dog! A brindled, short-haired 
beast with a formidable gladiatorial chest 
which suggested English bull, its massive head 
a grotesque gargoyle, tracing to no known 
breed. It seemed mostly mouth, so much so 


264 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 


that he reminded Gordon not of a quadruped 
but of a sculpin. Heavily built throughout, 
the animal weighed about fifty pounds. 

“Come, Jack!” called Gordon and extended 
his hand. The animal came sidling up with 
that furtively apologetic air which marks the 
stray. A short tail wagged propitiatingly as 
he reared up to place his fore paws on the run¬ 
ning board. Gordon patted his ugly head. 
A huge red tongue sought to lick his hand. 
Reaching into the pocket of the door Gordon 
found a box of biscuit, the remnant of one of 
his picnic lunches with Phyllis. One by one 
he fed them to the animal who gulped them 
ravenously. In his exuberance it seemed that 
he would squirm out of his skin. 

“Poor beast,” thought Gordon; “someone 
must have revolted at seeing that face con¬ 
stantly and turned him out. Really he’s so 
ugly he’s a curiosity, a kind of Jo-jo of dogs.” 

The box consumed, he started the car and 
drove off. But his friend was not to be so 
lightly abandoned. He trotted along behind 
the car, quickening his pace as the machine 
gained impetus. Realizing finally the hope¬ 
lessness of the race, he gathered all his energy 
into one desperate burst of speed which 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 265 


brought him alongside. He leapt upon the 
running board, balanced precariously for a mo¬ 
ment and then fell off. Gordon sighed and 
pulled up. 

“Sentimentalist!” he ejaculated disgustedly. 
“What a destiny—to own that dog or whatever 
it is.” 

The beast, hope reawakened by the car’s 
halt, ambled up. Gordon opened the front 
door, he leapt in and up upon the seat. Busi¬ 
ness of joyous reunion. With difficulty Gor¬ 
don kept the creature’s tongue from his face. 
Finally he quieted down and sat sedately on 
his haunches beside his benefactor. And there 
he still sat when his new owner drove up before 
the Winslows’. Mrs. Winslow and the girls 
were fussing about the rosebushes in front of 
the house. Shrieks of horror as the full im¬ 
pact of the dog’s gorgon-like countenance was 
experienced. 

“Very rare and valuable animal,” Gordon 
assured them proudly. “Tasmanian ape dog. 
Used for hunting apes in the mountains. His 
kennel name is Champion Masterpiece the 
Second, but he answers to Caliban.” The 
dog squirmed with delight as the women tim¬ 
orously approached. 


266 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


“Mongolian mongrel!” asserted Phyllis 
with decision. “Where did you get him, and 
why?” 

Gordon confessed. “He’ll make a good 
watch dog about the quarry,” he suggested 
hopefully, anxious to justify his acquisition on 
some practical grounds. “Let’s feed him,” 
and he led the dog around to the back door. 
Proper dog meat being lacking he made out a 
meal on dog biscuit soaked in milk purchased 
by his master as he came through the town. 

Winslow, pere, appeared in the midst of the 
scene. “Very unique animal,” he asserted. 
“And that is the only correct way to secure a 
dog. If a dog figures in your destiny he’ll 
find you and you cannot escape. To buy a 
dog is an outrage against nature and the great 
scheme of things. It is like buying a wife or 
a child.” 

“But this dog looks so plebeian,” Mrs. Win¬ 
slow’s offering. 

“No, this dog is like genius, entirely beyond 
the range of such words as patrician or plebe¬ 
ian. He transcends all usual terms. He is 
simply himself; perhaps an atavistic survival 
of some primitive dog, a Neanderthal dog, I 
suspect. Douglas says he is Tasmanian. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 267 


That supports my theory for it is a fact that 
Australasia preserves a fauna infinitely more 
ancient than that of the other continents . . . 
the duck bill for example, and the kangaroo.” 

Caliban absorbed in his breakfast which he 
devoured with strange noises seemed insensi¬ 
tive to the scientific discussion of his origin. 

“I think he’s a horrible looking brute,” was 
Phyllis’s conclusion delivered with an air of 
closing the discussion. Mrs. Winslow, more 
tactful, suggested that though quite obviously 
not a house dog, Caliban would doubtless make 
a good quarry dog. Secretly the episode, 
though slight, confirmed her in her opinion of 
Gordon’s dangerous unconventionality. But 
Caliban heaving a sigh of content at having 
established contact even though transitory with 
a master and a meal, lay down to sleep on the 
kitchen stoop. The family strolled in to its 
own breakfast. 

The day passed without untoward incident. 
Gordon accompanied by Phyllis and Rosa¬ 
mond rolled lazily along country roads in the 
morning. The afternoon was consumed by 
calls upon family friends, ancient gentle¬ 
women, parishioners of Mr. Winslow’s. Mrs. 
Winslow, Phyllis and Gordon comprised the 


268 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

party. Gordon withstood the ordeal cou¬ 
rageously but was visibly flagging by dinner 
time. A stroll in the evening alone with Phyl¬ 
lis revived him. 

“You poor boy,” she said commiseratingly. 
“It’s very trying, I realize. But it’s inevi¬ 
table. If you had a family and I were on trial 
before them I’d be in still worse case. Women 
are merciless to one another. You’re fortu¬ 
nate after all in their approval. Father says 
he has acquired a son at last. He was always 
disappointed that not one of us proved to be a 
boy. Anyway it’s almost over. By to-mor¬ 
row afternoon we’ll be on the road to Bellport.” 

“It isn’t that,” protested Gordon, “not the 
appraisal part of it. I don’t know what it is, 
but I can’t breathe. It’s something in the 
mental atmosphere hereabouts. It oppresses 
me. I’m too relaxed and careless a soul for 
this conventional community.” 

Phyllis looked at him speculatively. They 
were seated on a boulder by a quiet stream. 
She intended gradually to curb some of Gor¬ 
don’s objectionable tendencies once they were 
securely wedded. Democracy was all right in 
theory but after all there were such things as 
standards to be maintained, taboos to be ob- 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 269 


served. And Gordon either scorned them or 
was utterly impervious to their influence; she 
was not sure which. 

Now that matter of Caliban who lay at their 
feet. Gordon could easily have afforded a 
pedigreed animal, one which would have im¬ 
plied a certain discernment, a feeling for the 
niceties of life, a dog whose lineage could be 
casually referred to as distinguished, suggest¬ 
ing a similar genealogy for its owners. In¬ 
stead of which—Caliban—the living and tan¬ 
gible evidence of some illicit and disgraceful 
union. 

“You sound like father,” she finally replied. 
“I wonder if you men wouldn’t revert to sav¬ 
agery if it weren’t for us women? It is we 
who conserve the standards that the race has 
wrested from barbarism.” 

“But it is an open question,” suggested Gor¬ 
don, “how much of what has been wrested 
from barbarism could not better have been dis¬ 
pensed with. Caste and ostentation and snob¬ 
bery: all those chilling ideas which make man 
and woman ignoble; whether or not barbarians 
suffered from them, it is time that civilization 
scrapped them.” 

Phyllis cleverly shifted the conversation to 


270 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


an innocuous theme offering no opportunity 
for dispute. For the point Gordon had raised 
she realized from past experience was in their 
case controversial. She completely disagreed 
with him and was tactful enough to realize the 
futility of discussion. Gradually both suc¬ 
cumbed to the magic of the hour and place, 
and Phyllis’s lips were warm from his kisses 
when they returned to the house. 

“Well, now you know all Greenmeadow, or 
at least all Greenmeadow knows you.” Phyllis 
settled back comfortably in her seat; they were 
just outside the town bound for Bellport. 

“Well, it’s over,” Gordon heaved a sigh of 
relief, “and I’m ahead of the game one per¬ 
fectly good family.” A heavy paw fell upon 
his shoulder followed by a frantic lick at his ear. 
“Oh yes, and, item . . . one dog ... or 
whatever it is, with a perfectly good appetite.” 

Phyllis stiffened. “Douglas, I do hope you 
get rid of him promptly. He is so utterly im¬ 
possible with that absurd grinning face.” 

“Le chien qui rit ” suggested Gordon. 
“Who knows what pathos, what tragedy, may 
lie concealed behind that clownish counte¬ 
nance ?” 

“Goat!” exclaimed Phyllis. 


PART THREE 
THE MILLS OF THE GODS 






CHAPTER XXVIII 

Gordon was seated alone in his office one 
morning the week following his return from 
Greenmeadow. The morning had dawned sti- 
flingly hot but an east wind springing up at 
about ten o’clock swept gratefully through the 
little room. He looked up inquiringly from 
his Trautwine as two men entered. 

“Mr. Gordon? Douglas Gordon, superin¬ 
tendent of this plant?” inquired one, a rather 
fattish bald-headed man with keen gray eyes. 

Gordon nodded and removed his feet from 
the lower desk drawer which he had opened to 
serve as a rest. At the same time, laying down 
his black-bound volume, he filled and lighted 
his pipe. “What firm do you gentlemen rep¬ 
resent?” he inquired pleasantly. 

“My name is Cummings and this is Mr. 
Halliday. We represent the United States 
secret service and have come to place you un¬ 
der arrest, Mr. Gordon, for falsifying the 
weight returns on this job. Here is the war¬ 
rant.” He tossed the document upon the 
273 


274 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

desk His manner was not dramatic, was in 
fact curiously impersonal and business-like. 
He might have been a tax collector. His com¬ 
panion, Halliday, a lean sandy-haired man 
with pale blue eyes watched Gordon closely as 
though interested in observing his reactions. 

Gordon expelled a cloud of smoke, picked 
up the document and read it carefully. 

“If this is one of Captain Tucker’s practical 
jokes,” he replied at last, “it has certainly been 
elaborately worked up. If it isn’t a joke, I 
haven’t the slightest idea regarding the modus 
operandi. Where do we go from here?” His 
manner was serious but perfectly calm. 

“It is no joke, Mr. Gordon.” Cummings 
eyed him keenly and he drew back his coat to 
reveal his badge. “We know nothing of the 
details, have had no contact with working up 
the case. Our orders are to make the arrest, 
place you in custody in Hereford where you’ll 
be arraigned. The thing for you to do is to 
arrange for a lawyer and for bail. Later tbe 
grand jury, if the charge is sustained, renders 
an indictment and you are tried before a fed¬ 
eral court.” 

“Hello, Captain, come in,” Gordon sang 
out to Tucker who was passing the door. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 275 

“Mr. Cummings and Mr. Halliday—Captain 
Tucker, in charge of our floating stock. Sit 
down, Captain. It may be a long time before 
you have a friendly chat with me again. 
These gentlemen are secret service men, and 
they’ve just placed me under arrest for falsify¬ 
ing the weight returns.” 

Captain Tucker slumped heavily into a 
chair. “You ain’t kiddin’, parson?” he urged 
earnestly. 

“There’s the warrant and these men have 
their credentials.” 

The old man turned to the officers. “Got 
one for me?” he inquired. “For if that man 
ever falsified any weight returns I must have 
too; and probl’y the justices of the supreme 
court.” 

“Mr. Cummings and Mr. Halliday tell me 
that they know nothing about the details, Cap¬ 
tain,” interrupted Gordon who feared that 
Tucker in his choler might start a row. 
“They’ve got no more to do with this charge 
than you have. But I’d better get hold of 
Keller.” He picked up the telephone and in 
a few minutes had the Tudor Arms. 

“Mr. Keller went to New York this morn¬ 
ing.” That was what came over the wire. 


276 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

“Well . . . let’s start the machinery,” he 
said as he replaced the receiver. “I’m at your 
service, gentlemen.” 

“I’m coming too,” asserted Captain Tucker 
belligerently. “They may not let me in the 

cell but I’m going to be on hand to do what I 

_ _ _ >> 

can. 

The four men descended the stairs and en¬ 
tered the automobile which had brought the 
emissaries of justice. 

“Tell O’Hearn we’ve gone to Hereford. 
Back to-morrow—maybe this afternoon.” 
Tucker yelled the instructions to a passing 
walking boss. 

“Maybe,” added Gordon quietly. 

“‘Parson, it looks to me as though somebody 
had falsified the weights all right,” said 
Tucker, “and you’re selected as the scapegoat. 
You indorse the sheet as O. K. every month, 
don’t you?” 

“Sure, but the figures have been accurate, 
I’ll swear to that.” They spoke with complete 
freedom before the two officers who listened 
attentively. 

“Yes, but they may have been doped after 
they left your hands.” 

“But how could they figure I had a motive? 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 277 

Oh ... I see. ... I get a salary plus a 
bonus on the tonnage dumped. They figure 
I doped them to increase my bonus cheque. 
But my cheque has always corresponded to the 
figures I O. K.’d.” 

“But can you prove it? You’ve cashed 
those cheques and they’re back in the main of¬ 
fice in New York.” 

“Well, I can get them from there, I sup¬ 
pose.” 

“But can you? Parson, this is deep stuff. 
Denton’s duplicate report must have been 
doped too. I wonder where he is? I haven’t 
seen him to-day. You’ve been framed and by 
parties that are mighty close to you. Don’t 
count on anybody is my advice. Somebody or 
some gang of somebodies has been pulling some 
crooked work and to avoid arrest has picked 
you as the fall guy. I told you long ago that 
I smelled a rat.” 

“And I used to kid you for being an alarm¬ 
ist.” Gordon laughed. “We’ve got all the 
elements for a crook melodrama, but I never 
thought I’d figure in so prominent a role.” 

“Now don’t be too cheerful,” warned 
Tucker. “Many a man as innocent as you has 
been railroaded to the pen by perjured evi- 


278 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

dence. I want you to have a realizing sense 
of what you’re facing.” 

“Don’t you think for a minute that I don’t. 
But I may as well be cheerful until they spring 
the drop.” 

Despite his attempts at judicial severity 
Cummings grinned. In all his experience he 
had never seen a guilty man put up so con¬ 
vincing a bluff. He wondered if the old man 
were an accomplice. They discussed the case 
as thoroughly as possible, groping as they were 
in utter blindness, until they pulled up shortly 
before noon in front of the Court House. 

It was nearly four o’clock when Gordon and 
Captain Tucker emerged from the building, 
Gordon being for the present at least at 
liberty. 

Upon entering they had been greeted by a 
dapper, fidgety little man with thin graying 
hair, a close-cropped moustache and a nervous 
uneasy manner, who had introduced himself 
as Randolph Hutchins, an attorney from New 
York, representing the Keller Construction 
Company in securing bail for its employee. 
“I don’t know much about this business,” he 
admitted. “Mr. Wellington told me two days 
ago that some difficulty had developed about 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 279 


weight returns, that you might be placed under 
arrest and that I was to come on to give 
surety. I’ve got all the papers ready. It’s 
unlikely that the judge will fix your bail at 
more than $20,000 and I’m prepared to cover 
it.” 

Gordon found it impossible to get past the 
opaque veil of his stony eyes. 

“So Wellington had inside information,” 
commented Captain Tucker meaningly. 
“Queer he didn’t notify Mr. Gordon.” 

“Now how about counsel?” inquired 
Hutchins ignoring the captain’s remark. “If 
an indictment is returned you’ll want someone 
to represent you. We have specialized in the 
criminal branches: Hutchins, Lockwood and 
Brown.” He stopped, waiting for Gordon to 
speak. 

Captain Tucker frowned and shook his head 
almost imperceptibly. 

“I think I’ll make no definite decision to¬ 
day. This is too serious a matter for snap¬ 
shot judgment.” 

“Quite right. There’s no great rush. 
You’ll want to consult Mr. Keller and Mr. 
Wellington anyway. I think they’ll support 
my suggestion. In fact Mr. Wellington re- 


280 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

quested me to offer our services. But you 
can let me hear later.” 

The three men entered Judge Elwood’s 
chambers where they found the judge, a frail 
little bushy-eyebrowed old man who looked 
somehow as though he were probably a reader 
of Charles Lamb, Pepys’ Diary and other liter¬ 
ature of an earlier age, in conversation with 
the federal district attorney. The whole 
transaction was conducted with an impersonal 
business-like air; as though it were a real estate 
deal or some similarly everyday affair. 

The judge and Chandler Gifford, repre¬ 
senting the government, seemed to regard 
Gordon much to his surprise without condem¬ 
nation. He had imagined that a man accused 
as he was of a serious crime would be eyed 
askance particularly by men who bore the rela¬ 
tion to him of these two. He did not realize 
that their backgrounds of legal practice had 
first, rendered them peculiarly open-minded 
until at least a conviction had been secured, 
and second, reduced all individuals enmeshed 
in the law’s technicalities to the position of 
impersonal pawns, the conviction or acquittal 
of whom depended almost entirely upon the 
relative abilities of their attorneys. Gifford, 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 281 


a square-jawed man in eyeglasses who was 
cursed with a particularly recalcitrant cowlick 
was inclined to warm into a sort of advisory 
friendliness as he perceived Gordon’s complete 
and bewildered ignorance of the exigencies of 
the situation. Nor did he object to aiding 
Hutchins to the extent of posting him on the 
personnel and procedure of the local courts. 

“Denton will be indicted on separate 
counts,” he explained which was the first that 
Gordon knew of the inspector’s fate. Bail 
was fixed at $15,000. Hutchins’s credentials 
and sureties proved to be satisfactory and 
after being instructed to appear for a hearing 
two weeks later, the three men left. Hutchins 
bade them a hurried good-bye on the court 
house steps, announcing that he had barely 
time to catch a train for Boston which would 
connect him with the New York limited. 

“I’ll see you in New York in a day or two 
no doubt,” said Gordon. “I want to get to 
the bottom of this.” 

“I’m glad he’s out of the way.” The cap¬ 
tain stopped to light a cigar. “Now we can 
talk. We know a good deal more than we 
did.” 

“But not so much as we ought to. So the 


282 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

company knew what was brewing. Why is 
Wellington so thoughtful about bailing me 
out?” 

Tucker laughed sarcastically. “Why in¬ 
deed? Now, Parson, I’ll tell you my theory 
and this time you won’t laugh. Denton’s 
crooked and so is Wellington and maybe John 
B. Keller, though that’s a terrible hard thing 
for me to say. The weight returns have been 
doped sure enough. Wellington or somebody 
tested us out last summer to see whether we’d 
stand in with ’em. And they found us both 
honest. Remember that fellow Hubbard— 
and my experience with Ed Cook up at Ben¬ 
nett’s spar yard?” 

Gordon nodded. 

“Well, the government got wise; though not 
until the Keller Construction Company had 
probably cleaned up a half million or so in 
crooked money. In the meantime the crooks, 
figuring all along that there was a chance 
they’d get caught, have doped out a plan of 
passing the buck in case of trouble. There 
wasn’t a chance for Denton. He’s sure to be 
convicted, but the situation required someone 
to act as a scapegoat for the company and 
you’re elected. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 283 


“You’ll find that you’re up against the fin¬ 
est bunch of perjured testimony and faked 
evidence that a fellow ever faced. They 
wouldn’t hesitate at forgery or any other 
crime. And it’s ten to one that Wellington 
has arranged with this Hutchins fellow to lose 
your case for you if you fight. But what 
Wellington don’t know is this. I’m an old 
man . . . and I’m losing my taste for booze 
anyway . . . and if they railroad you to the 
pen I’ll strangle that damned rotten filthy 
black-hearted scoundrel from Hell with my 
own bare hands if it’s the last damned thing 
I do on this earth.” 

“Here now, Captain, calm down.” The 
veins stood out on the captain’s temples, his 
face was scarlet and he looked as though he 
might have a stroke of apoplexy as he stood 
there on the sidewalk. “Keep cool and we’ll 
beat this frame-up. For one thing, what jury 
is going to believe that the company didn’t 
knowingly profit by a deal that, even if I’d got 
the money, would have paid me only a dime to 
their dollar?” 

“But the company ain’t been indicted. It’s 
you and Denton. The jury may suspect the 
company but that won’t help you. And re- 


284 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


member, Denton will probably swear that you 
and him were the only two involved. Well, 
here’s the Bellport trolley. Let’s go home.” 

The two men threshed out the situation from 
every angle as the open car sped through fra¬ 
grant uplands and skirted shadowed coves. 
To Gordon there was about the entire affair a 
fantastically unreal quality. He could not as 
yet adjust himself to it. It seemed as though 
he must be laboring under an hypnosis and 
that the spell might momentarily lift. Hon¬ 
esty was as natural to him as breathing, so 
much so that he always observed theft with a 
certain shock of surprise and incredulity. 

They dropped off at the quarry to find it 
closed down for the night, secured Gordon’s 
machine and drove home. Gordon wondered 
as he mounted the steps whether Phyllis and 
Mrs. Hale had heard any rumors of the day’s 
events. He must attempt to minimize their 
significance in explaining the situation to the 
women. 

It was not until after dinner that he told 
Phyllis. 

“But, Douglas . . . it’s too utterly prepos¬ 
terous! To think of my fiance’s being ac- 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 285 


cused of a crime, and such a crime. I can’t 
credit it!” 

“You’ll have to credit it when you see the 
morning papers,” replied Gordon. 

They were seated on the steps of an old 
house, unoccupied this season, which over¬ 
looked the sea. The night wind, drifting 
ghostily from the water, fanned their cheeks 
with its damp breath. 

“What will Mother say . . . and the girls 
. . . and Mrs. Murray and Mr. Aldrich? 
Isn’t it simply too frightful? I can’t quite 
adjust myself to it. I didn’t know such things 
happened. Well, I don’t care what they say. 
I’ll stick by you.” 

Gordon regarded her curiously. He hadn t 
thought very much about Phyllis’s relation to 
this event; had been too occupied pondering its 
intricacies. So Phyllis seemed to assume that 
there was an alternative. Some girls might 
not have stuck by him, or so she implied. He 
was thinking, trying to see the whole situation 
from Phyllis’s viewpoint. 

“Well, you know,” he remarked after a 
silence, “you don’t want to be bound to a man 
who’s wearing stripes in the penitentiary. 


286 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


That’s not a pleasant prospect for the Rev¬ 
erend Ellery Winslow’s daughter. Your 
mother has not yet finally announced our en¬ 
gagement. Suppose we just cancel it till we 
see what happens.” Gordon’s voice sounded 
strained and unnatural. Suddenly the full sig¬ 
nificance of his predicament had been borne 
in upon him. That future which had seemed 
so secure, so serene twelve hours ago, a future 
which always presented to him one constantly 
recurring picture: a booklined room, a lamp, 
and seated opposite him, her face softened by 
the mellow light, her eyes tender with love, the 
woman of his choice . . . how ruthlessly had 
it been shattered. What had seemed so real 
had proved to be as insubstantial as a cobweb, 
and as easily as a cobweb is destroyed by a 
stroke of a stick, so had his dream been an¬ 
nihilated. 

4 ‘Of course we won’t cancel anything,” she 
protested, “but it might be best to delay the 
announcement. I don’t know. . . . I’ll have 
to consult Mother.” 

“Proper procedure when one’s daughter 
proves to be engaged to a convict. That will 
be a staggerer for her,” suggested Gordon. 
“Might involve a social setback. Well, I’m 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 287 


not in jail yet and I’ll fight every step of the 
way. Though so far as that goes many a 
better man has been there.” Despite Gordon’s 
efforts to be jocular about the matter, their 
evening was gloomy. Phyllis, it seemed to 
him, appeared to be almost as disturbed about 
the effect of the news in Greenmeadow’s elect 
circles as about any other factor. 

“Why do you let that bother you?” Gor¬ 
don inquired with a hint of irritation. “Any 
intelligent person who knows us must know 
that it is incredible that I could be guilty of 
such a crime. Look at dear old Mrs. Hale. 
Demands to act as surety for my bail. And 
anyone who knows you must know that you 
couldn’t be engaged to a thief. What do we 
care about the rest of the world? I have never 
given a thought to the world’s estimate of 
me and now I’m thankful I’m built that way. 
I’d be in a bad way if I worried about my 
reputation. That’s merely a form of moral 
cowardice, the herd instinct.” 

“Douglas, you are so independent. People 
have to conform to get along in this world. 
It’s because almost everyone’s progress de¬ 
pends upon others’ opinions of them. Look at 
Father. He’d always get into arguments at 


288 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

the conferences so they’ve always kept him in 
obscure pastorates.” 

Gordon shook his head stubbornly. “You’ll 
have to take me as I am, Phyllis. My attitude 
is not rebellious nor antagonistic. I think the 
world is all right but I ignore a good many 
of its standards—that’s all. I’ve never been 
politic. If I tried to be I’d foozle it. And 
though I’ve suddenly come a cropper, you 
can’t ascribe it to any fault in me. It has just 
happened—like a stroke of lightning. How¬ 
ever, it’s a mighty difficult thing to make a 
crooked frame-up fool-proof in every detail. 
I expect to be able to riddle the evidence which 
has been concocted and to secure an acquittal. 
I leave for New York in the morning to see 
Keller and Wellington and to arrange for 
counsel. When I come back I’ll know a lot 
more.” 

But Phyllis refused to be cheered. For too 
many years had she been subject to the influ¬ 
ence of her mother, a woman who was always 
prepared for the worst and when it didn’t oc¬ 
cur felt it to be only a reprieve—that sooner 
or later the blow would descend. 

It was with eyes welling with tears that 
she kissed him good night at her door. 


CHAPTER XXIX 


As Gordon boarded the train for New York 
the next morning he picked up the Hereford 
paper from the station news stand. On the 
front page was a brief item covering his arrest. 
He hoped that Phyllis, who had accompanied 
him to the train and whose labored attempt 
to be cheerful was most depressing, would not 
see it. The reporter evidently had been un¬ 
able to secure detailed information. Denton’s 
name did not appear, which tended to confirm 
his impression that the inspector had not yet 
been apprehended. He wondered what would 
develop in the interview which lay before him 
and for a moment regretted that he had not 
acceded to Captain Tucker’s demand when the 
wired summons arrived that he be permitted 
to accompany him. 

“Ought to have a witness, Parson,” Tucker 
had urged. “And as for this job of mine, if 
the company is trying to put something over 
on you, I wouldn’t work for them anyway.” 

But Gordon in the older man’s interests had 

289 


290 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

vetoed the suggestion. It seemed clear too 
that he would be dealing with men altogether 
too shrewd to commit themselves before wit¬ 
nesses. The best thing to do was to feel out 
the situation, ascertain the attitude of those 
involved, and then proceed as circumstances 
dictated. He felt certain that Keller, what¬ 
ever the exigencies of the case forced him to 
do, felt kindly toward him. Wellington, so 
far as he knew, cherished no animus but would 
not hesitate, he felt confident, to sacrifice him 
or anyone else who stood in the way of his 
own safety. 

As the train, an express to Boston, flashed 
through Jasmine, a blithe garden of carefree 
pleasure sparkling in the morning sun, he 
thought of Patricia and of what her reaction 
would be to these fantastic events. Strangely 
he had thought of her the previous day, had 
felt the need of consulting her, before the 
thought of Phyllis had occurred to him in the 
same connection. 

“John B. will find Pat a handful in this 
business,” he reflected. “She will never plac¬ 
idly acquiesce in the plan which I suspect has 
been outlined.” That Patricia would for a 
moment question his integrity he knew to be 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 291 


inconceivable. Despite the menace of his own 
problem, he found it in his heart to pity the 
Kellers and their acceptance of standards 
which, to maintain, resulted in steps so des¬ 
perate. Gordon was capable of flaming in¬ 
dignation at another’s wrongs. Yet oddly 
enough he felt no anger about this case. It 
seemed clear to him that everyone involved was 
being forced by inexorable destiny to take each 
successive step. Once committed to a dis¬ 
honest policy it was clear, for example, that 
John Keller must display no scruples in de¬ 
fending himself, for if he went down his wife 
and children must pay the penalty with him. 
No, the drama must unfold as written and 
the actors assume the roles assigned them. 
He began casting about in his mind for an at¬ 
torney to defend him but concluded finally that 
it was best to take no steps until he knew more 
definitely the position of Keller and Welling¬ 
ton. 

It was nearly six o’clock when his train 
pulled into the Grand Central. Further de¬ 
velopments must await the morning. After 
dinner he strolled into one of the elaborate 
Broadway moving picture houses and watched 
the unfolding of an intricate plot involving the 


292 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

nefarious activities of a dishonest bank cashier 
who shifted the blame for a shortage to the 
shoulders of a young paying teller. But the 
story failed to hold his attention. His own 
problems were too pressing. 

Returning to his hotel, he slept soundly and 
awoke in the morning, a prey to mingled emo¬ 
tions. Intense curiosity was perhaps the 
dominant one, coupled with a certain pugna¬ 
cious resolution to wrest from his principals 
every possible admission which might help him 
in building his own defense. At nine-thirty he 
stepped out of the elevator on the seventeenth 
floor of the building which housed the Keller 
Construction Company’s offices. He turned 
the knob with decision and a moment later was 
ushered into John Keller’s private office, a 
fairly large, plainly yet richly furnished room, 
which commanded a view of Bryant Park. 

“Hello, Gordon. Sit down here.” Keller 
arose from his desk and fussed with a com¬ 
fortable arm chair which was placed nearby 
facing the light. Wellington who sat beside 
Keller’s desk, facing him, contented himself 
with a cheerful nod. Gordon as he ap¬ 
proached kept his hands in his pockets. He 
preferred not to shake hands, not to have the 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 293 


conversation salved with saponaceous friendli¬ 
ness. He accepted a cigar from Keller, 
lighted it and sat awaiting developments. 

Wellington spoke first. “Well,” he ob¬ 
served, “Hutchins reports that he fixed things 
up for you all right, the bail I mean.” 

“Obviously. Else I wouldn’t be here. But 
what’s the bail for? That’s what I came to 
find out.” 

Wellington drew a long breath while Keller 
looked intently at the end of his cigar. He 
found difficulty evidently in meeting Gordon’s 
eye. 

“Gordon, there’s hell to pay. The govern¬ 
ment asserts that the weights have been doped 
for some months past on the Bellport job. 
They demand restitution from us which of 
course we’ll have to make though it s difficult to 
arrive at the exact figure, and they will to-day 
arrest Denton whose doped returns corre¬ 
sponded to the sheet which the company ren¬ 
ders, the sheet I mean which you indorsed 
monthly and mailed to us for submission to 
Washington. 

“Now we’ve been in touch with Denton and 
it seems that he will appear as a witness against 
you and testify to the fact that this was a 


294 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

deal between you two. Later he will be tried 
and we understand that he will plead guilty. 
Of course, we don’t believe you’re guilty or 
anything of the sort.” Wellington spoke hur¬ 
riedly as though fearing an interruption from 
his listener. “But there’s a mass of evidence 
which would make it look so. So here’s our 
proposition. You’re almost certain to be con¬ 
victed anyway so, if you’ll just plead guilty, 
we’ll put into the hands of any person you may 
name fifty thousand dollars in greenbacks to 
be paid to you the day you say ‘Guilty,’ and 
we’ll also sign a contract guaranteeing you a 
job if you want it after you get out for ten 
years at ten thousand dollars a year. Fifty 
thousand dollars at seven per cent brings in an 
income of thirty-five hundred dollars a year. 
So there you’ll be, fixed for life, Gordon, with 
never another worry.” Wellington sought to 
assume an air of patronizing benevolence, as 
though he were conferring a great favor. 

This speech of Wellington’s was, Gordon 
realized, his cue for a declamatory outburst of 
injured innocence. Any man similarly placed 
in the usual novel or play would have thus 
reacted. And it is true no doubt that the 
vast majority of people do seek to play up to 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 295 


the stock conceptions of the proper procedure 
in certain circumstances. In actual life, how¬ 
ever, a person deeply wronged may accept the 
disclosure with philosophic calm and yet fly 
into a rage because after a night devoted to 
fighting mosquitoes he finds his toast burned 
at breakfast. An explosion of rage is as a rule 
traceable to overwrought nerves rather than to 
an actual justification. 

Gordon sat surveying Wellington coolly, re¬ 
flecting that these men must feel none too se¬ 
cure else they would not have made what was 
from their viewpoint so liberal an offer. Then 
he shifted his glance to Keller who gazed out of 
the window to avoid meeting his eyes. There 
was something at once comic and pathetic 
about the uneasy expression on the elder man’s 
red beefy face. He had, as a matter of fact, 
always valued Gordon’s respect and it was a 
blow to his vanity to lose it. From his knowl¬ 
edge of Gordon he had deemed Wellington’s 
preposterous proposal a waste of time but had 
acceded to his partner’s plan because, with 
storm clouds hovering, he considered it good 
policy to avoid friction. 

“Wellington, I credited you with keener 
perceptions.” Gordon spoke calmly but with 


296 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

a certain decision which left no doubt as to his 
attitude. “This proposition indicts your in¬ 
telligence rather than my character. You two 
have evidently been swindling the government 
in collusion with Denton and you’ve bribed 
him to implicate me. I’ll fight this to the last 
ditch and before I’m through I’ll not only be 
vindicated but I’ll have you and Keller here 
behind the bars on so many counts that you’ll 
never get out. You’ve got altogether too in¬ 
tricate a problem on your hands, a case involv¬ 
ing forgery, perjury and I don’t know how 
many other offenses. Denton can never stand 
up under a cross examination and I doubt if 
you can with a story like this. 

“Also I’ll have a civil case against you that 
will cost you a good deal more than fifty 
thousand dollars. What you men had better 
do is to cut out the melodrama and have this 
charge against me dropped. The government 
must be proceeding on fake evidence supplied 
by you. Make complete restitution and take 
your medicine. You’ll get off easier in the 
long run.” 

Keller, who had been listening attentively, 
stirred uneasily in his chair. It did seem ab¬ 
surd to seek to involve Gordon. Everything 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 297 


about him, his clear eye and frank expression 
so palpably bespoke transparent honesty. 
And he was sincerely fond of the man. Never 
in his life which had held many questionable 
transactions had he had to take a step which 
went so against the grain. But his hands were 
tied and he could see no other solution to this 
menacing problem. He realized that Gor¬ 
don’s presentation was reasonable but he also 
knew that Gordon had little conception of the 
power of money and the force of cunning in 
a case of this sort. 

It was true that the Keller Construction 
Company would have to make restitution for 
the sums wrongly secured from the time the 
government had ascertained that the weights 
had been manipulated. But there remained 
a large sum paid prior to this time and that 
would go a long way in fixing whatever judges 
and other government officials proved to be 
venal. Keller, from the very nature of his 
business, his whole income being derived from 
the River and Harbor appropriation, had had 
to study the intricacies of politics. He knew 
that generally speaking political life attracted 
men whose ethics were sub-normal, that federal 
judgeships were political plums, and that in 


298 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

the very nature of things a man of Gordon’s 
direct simplicity would be helpless once en¬ 
trapped in the labyrinth of the law. Even if 
Gordon fought bitterly, he would see that he 
got on his feet after serving his term. There 
was not a man in his employ whom he would 
not have preferred to sacrifice. Gordon as 
superintendent, paid a bonus on tonnage 
shipped and in constant contact with Denton, 
was, however, the logical scapegoat. Some¬ 
one must be the scapegoat. Certainly John 
B. Keller could not be expected to wear stripes. 
He had his family to think about, his wife’s 
position, Patricia’s marriage, Clifford’s future. 
He regretted most bitterly now this disclosure 
had come, that he had not been content with 
his legitimate profit. But there again he had 
he felt been the victim of circumstances. The 
Bellport job had been secured at too low a 
price. Had he not accepted Wellington’s 
suggestion of corrupting Denton, he might 
now be bankrupt. 

Wellington cleared his throat. “There’s 
our proposition,” he said firmly. “You can 
think it over for a week if you want to. If 
you turn it down, of course you’ll have to find 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 299 


surety elsewhere. You can’t expect us to at¬ 
tend to your bail if you’re fighting us.” 

Something about his self-righteous air im¬ 
pressed Gordon as being intensely amusing. 
He began to laugh, and Keller could not re¬ 
press a smile. 

“Wellington, you’re rich,” exclaimed Gor¬ 
don. “I really believe that you believe I’m an 
unreasonable and ungrateful sort of chap to 
refuse your generous offer. I’ll arrange for 
transferring the surety, if I find it convenient, 
as soon as I get back to Bellport. But in the 
meantime,” his voice held a menacing note, “no 
funny business about it, or you’ll answer 
to me personally.” 

Wellington remained uncomfortably silent. 
He had felt Gordon’s hands on his throat 
once. The episode still rankled; in fact, ex¬ 
plained in great measure his willingness to 
brand Gordon a criminal. 

“Now, gentlemen, I’ll be rather busy for 
awhile.” Gordon arose. “My connection 
with the Keller Construction Company ends 
to-day. Kindly figure out my cheque and 
mail it to the ‘Engineers.’ Good day,” and he 
walked briskly out. 


300 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

“And that’s that,” said Keller as the door 
closed. 

“Well, we had to try it on him,” defended 
Wellington. “No harm is done.” But his 
bearing as he entered his own office which ad¬ 
joined Keller’s was not confident. He realized 
that many contingencies might arise if Gor¬ 
don’s case were skilfully fought, which would 
incriminate him. He had, to be sure, covered 
every detail which could be foreseen. The Kel¬ 
ler Construction Company’s books showed en¬ 
tries of bonus cheques paid to Gordon which 
corresponded to the sums due him figured upon 
the basis of the manipulated weight sheets. It 
was true that the cheques actually paid him 
agreed with the honestly rendered returns 
which he had forwarded to New York but these 
cancelled cheques were safely accounted for 
and forged versions would be introduced as 
evidence. It had been a simple matter to have 
rubber stamps made corresponding to the in¬ 
dorsements of the various banks through 
which they had passed and to forge Gordon’s 
indorsement on the backs required merely 
some clever pen work. 

He was nervous, however, about Denton. 
The inspector seeing the hopelessness of an 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 301 


acquittal had made up his mind to face the 
music. He saw that to implicate the company 
would gain him nothing while to protect it had 
been made worth his while. He was to receive 
fifty thousand dollars for testifying against 
Gordon, and he figured that by thus turning 
state’s evidence his sentence would be light¬ 
ened. Wellington feared Denton’s dullness. 
A distinctly stupid man, it was a question 
whether or not a penetrating cross-examination 
might not trip him up. 


CHAPTER XXX 

Gordon’s first step, obviously, was to secure a 
lawyer. As he walked up Fifth Avenue, he 
mentally reviewed his list of friends and ac¬ 
quaintances. He did not personally know one 
lawyer. Never a mixer in the usual sense of 
the word, his acquaintance was not wide and 
most of the men he knew in New York were 
in engineering and technical circles. He had 
not the remotest idea of the cost of defending 
a criminal charge like this one. He thought it 
likely that it would completely strip him of 
his modest accumulations which totalled only 
some ten or eleven thousand dollars. And if 
convicted, which seemed not impossible, he 
would after serving his term have to change his 
name, emigrate to some distant point and start 
life over. As he stood by one of the lions in 
front of the library, gazing absently at the non¬ 
descript summer crowd which surged lan¬ 
guidly past in the hot July sun, he was 
poignantly assailed with a sense of the unre¬ 
ality of this experience. It was the sort of 
302 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 303 


thing which might happen to a man in a book. 
Vainly he groped for a method of procedure. 
A poor lawyer, he knew, could botch the best 
case in the world, a good one secure a verdict 
in the face of insuperable odds. 

“What a damnable nuisance, this whole ri¬ 
diculous business!” he suddenly exclaimed 
aloud, and a wave of anger swept him. “That 
pudgy dolt, Wellington; too stupid to be 
crooked successfully, he fumbles it and puts me 
in this pickle. Damn him! . . . I’ll go back 
and at least have the satisfaction of beating him 
up.” He strode swiftly back to the building, 
anxious to confront his antagonist ere his 
choler cooled. Energized by his irritation he 
would have tackled both men with supreme 
confidence. 

“Mr. Wellington left shortly after you did, 
Mr. Gordon.” Miss Cramer, the girl at the 
switchboard, smiled sweetly. She liked Gor¬ 
don who had often stopped to exchange a few 
words with her. 

He turned away in disgust and mopping his 
brow, moist from his heightened temperature, 
pressed the elevator button. At the corner he 
picked up a Home Edition of a daily. A 
headline caught his eye—“Burton to Defend 


304 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

Unions in Injunction Case.” Gordon stopped 
short. “I’ll ask Burton to suggest someone,” 
he thought. Burton was a celebrated attorney 
who had made a fortune in the practice of his 
profession and who now gave most of his time 
to various radical and liberal causes which, of¬ 
ten too poor to afford competent counsel, 
found in this altruistic lawyer a valuable cham¬ 
pion. Gordon had met him one evening the 
previous winter at a liberal forum. He had 
little idea that Burton would recall him but he 
had faith in the man, in his character and his 
judgment. A telephone book gave him the re¬ 
quired address and he was quickly whirled 
down-town to Burton’s office. 

Burton, a tall, lean, countrified looking man 
with lantern jaws, keen gray eyes, a large nose 
and a humorous twist to his mouth, was seated 
at his desk, a law book in his hand, his long 
legs wound about the rungs of an adjoining 
chair in an intricate and indecipherable fashion. 
After a minute he recalled his visitor. 

“Yes, I remember. You were telling me 
about labor and living conditions in a Nevada 
mining camp. Sit down.” With surprising 
dexterity he extricated his legs from the vacant 
chair with one motion. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 305 


Gordon began to tell his story, rather halt¬ 
ingly at first. “You know,” he interjected, 
“I really begin to feel like a criminal. If this 
continues long enough I may confess to every¬ 
thing I’m charged with.” 

Burton laughed. “Go on,” he urged, “this 
thing sounds like a movie.” 

Finally Gordon concluded. “So there’s the 
whole story. I’ve come to you to recommend 
a good criminal lawyer to defend me.” 

“Well, I’ll be damned,” ejaculated the law¬ 
yer, still engrossed by Gordon’s narrative. 
“Some nerve, eh? They get the swag and you 
hold the bag!” His keen glance appraised 
Gordon shrewdly seeking to evaluate his story. 
He seemed satisfied. “So you want a good 
lawyer? You’ll need one. Those birds are 
going to use money wherever it will do the 
most good. Well, why don’t you let me de¬ 
fend you? I’m average good, they say, and 
I’d sort of enjoy cross-examining some of the 
witnesses in this case. I practised for years in 
the criminal courts in the old days. Also I 
take it you haven’t got a whole lot to spend and 
I can afford to handle it for a nominal sum. 
It’s a kind of a public service as I see it, fight¬ 
ing a gang of that kidney.” 


306 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

Gordon had hoped for no such happy solu¬ 
tion to this pressing problem. “I’d rather you 
defended me than anyone in the United 
States,” he exclaimed. 

For an hour they discussed the technicalities 
of the case. “A great deal hinges on your 
bonus cheques,” Burton explained. “Doubt¬ 
less they have faked cheques ready to intro¬ 
duce and probably they’ve destroyed the genu¬ 
ine cheques which you cashed. But we should 
leave no stone unturned and we’d better get 
into their offices to-night and go through the 
bookkeeper’s records.” 

“I think I have a key.” Gordon produced a 
key ring from his pocket. “Yes, and the night 
elevator man knows me. We’ll have no dif¬ 
ficulty.” They parted, agreeing to meet at 
the entrance of the office building at nine 
o’clock. 

“Yes, I thought so.” Burton snapped the 
elastic back on to a bundle of cancelled 
cheques. “In each month there’s a break in 
the sequence of numbers. That represents 
your cheque. Doubtless they’ve doped all 
their records to correspond.” 


PATRICIA S AWAKENING 307 


He looked longingly at the locked safe 
which held the books. 

“Well, we may be able to prove something 
from your own entries of deposits in the Bell- 
port bank. You can work that up when you 
get back there.” 

He carefully replaced the cheques, extin¬ 
guished the light and they went out. 


CHAPTER XXXI 

Gordon returned to Bellport to find that Phyl¬ 
lis had gone home “for a few days.” Mrs. 
Hale told him. He wrote her briefly the re¬ 
sult of his New York trip and then drove out 
to the quarry. He realized from the inter¬ 
ested and in most cases sympathetic glances of 
the men that his arrest had become common 
property. He felt unpleasantly conspicuous 
and reflected that were he actually guilty he 
could hardly feel more uncomfortable. In the 
office were OTIearn and Captain Tucker. 
O’Hearn, who concealed beneath a hearty hu¬ 
morous manner an arbitrary and jealous na¬ 
ture, greeted him coolly. 

“Can’t blame him,” thought Gordon. “He’s 
got his job to consider, and the little 
O’Hearns.” 

Captain Tucker remarking bluntly, “Well, 
Jerry, the parson and me have got something 
to talk over,” led the way to the tug which lay 
deserted at the dock. “Now tell me the whole 

308 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 309 


story, parson.” Gordon narrated his New 
York experiences in detail. 

“Just as I thought,” the captain nodded with 
melancholy satisfaction. “Well, the skunks 
will get my resignation to-morrow. I 
wouldn’t take another dollar o’ their dirty 
money. I’ve no one dependent on me. I’ve 
got nearly ten thousand in the bank and every 
dollar is yours to fight this thing with. No, 
don’t argue with me. I’d be afraid to stay, so 
far as that goes. Might just as likely hang 
something on me. It don’t surprise me about 
Wellington but I never did think Keller would 
pull a deal like this. Not that he leans over 
backward but this is pretty damned raw.” 
Savagely he bit off the end of a cigar. “Re¬ 
gan and Edwards have been after me for years. 
I’ll tie up with them.” 

As they walked up the pier, Tony Cellini 
came scuttling down from the top of the 
quarry. “Meester Gordona,” he cried excit¬ 
edly. “Madre di Dios! I reada da paper. 
All bout ’resta. You gooda man; Tony know. 
All lies, all wat you call . . .” he hesitated, 
“wat you call frama!” 

“Frame up, Tony,” interjected Tucker 
good-naturedly. 


310 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

“Si, si . . . frama. Badda man maka 
frama. Muss be. Meester Gordona ev’body 
know he gooda man. Crooks maka frama! 
he gesticulated wildly. “All say so our house. 
Now bouta da bail. I gotta da mon and Gui- 
seppe Pucci and Giovanni Carillo and Paolo 
Libonati—alia togeda—put uppa da mon.” 

Gordon was dumbfounded. It was true 
that he had lived very close to the men, had 
induced the company to raise the wage scale, 
cut the hours and improve the living condi¬ 
tions in the dormitories. But this tribute was 
totally unexpected. Thoroughly an Anglo- 
Saxon in his traditions, he felt hopelessly dis¬ 
graced to find his voice husky as he explained 
to Tony that the bail had been covered by his 
lawyer. 

Tony seemed disappointed. “Any time, 
allatime,” he urged. Gordon thanked him 
gratefully and they walked on. With no work 
to do he felt lost, a stray dog. Arriving home 
in the middle of the afternoon, he found Pa¬ 
tricia’s car before the door. She was stepping 
down from the porch as he drove up. 

“Climb in here,” she commanded, “and we’ll 
take a drive.” Despite the warmth she looked 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 311 


crisp and cool in light sport clothes. She 
swung north up the shore road. 

“Tell me all about it,” she urged. “Or as 
much as you know. Someone at the hotel saw 
it in the paper and showed it to me. Dad’s in 
New York. Naturally I came to you for de¬ 
tails. What in the world is behind so prepos¬ 
terous a thing? It’s fantastic. Is it a joke?” 

He hesitated. He had not foreseen this dif¬ 
ficulty. Could he tell Patricia the truth about 
her father? He might as well, he concluded, 
for any quixotic yarn he could invent would 
eventually be riddled. He outlined the events 
up to his interview in the company’s New York 
offices. Suddenly he stopped. “I can’t tell 
you this, Pat,” he exclaimed. “Can’t you see 
how impossible it is? It’s your own father. 
He’s forced to do it to protect you and your 
mother. You’ll have to get the facts else¬ 
where.” 

“Go on,” she demanded peremptorily. “If 
my father is a thief and worse I might as well 
know it now as later.” But her voice shook. 
Patricia’s father had been more than a father. 
He had been her comrade, her confidant. 
Gordon went on to the end. 


312 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

“Thank you,” she said simply when he had 
concluded. “It’s all clear enough.” But she 
sat, head bowed, as though stunned. Gordon 
realized that her tragedy was far deeper than 
his own. At the very worst he would serve a 
term and could then set about reconstructing 
his life. But this girl had lost a father; it was 
irrevocable. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, and they sat in silence, 
the stillness broken only by the hoarse and not 
unmusical calls of the gulls which circled about 
the headland upon which their car lay parked. 
His heart bled for her and he was swept by 
an almost irresistible impulse to take her in 
his arms, to comfort and shield her, to seek to 
repair the damage he had done. 

“You can feel compassion for me,” she said 
at last wonderingly. “And I’m a contributing 
cause to this wrong. It’s my extravagance, 
my worthless superfluous existence which has 
played its part. Oh, how I hate it all, the 
shoddiness of it, the ostentation, the wasting 
of the fruit of others’ toil; the cheap standards, 
the tawdry rivalries. This might all have been 
avoided had my family, any of us, had any un¬ 
derstanding of worth-while values. Well, 
. . . I’m through. I refuse to live on such 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 313 


tainted money. I shall go to New York and 
get a job. I’ll learn stenography perhaps— 
anything that will pay me twenty dollars a 
week, and I’ll live on that twenty. It’s not 
I who should be pitied—it’s you. This is my 
Nemesis. But you . . . you don’t deserve 
this. I can see no sense to it.” 

“Get a job?” echoed Gordon. “What about 
Beaudry?” 

“Beaudry! He’s part of it all. I want to 
cut loose from the whole absurd show. Why 
should Beaudry wish to marry the daughter of 
a thief and perjurer? I’m not fit to marry 
anyone. I’m a receiver of stolen goods. But 
I couldn’t marry him anyway. ... I don’t 
love him. I fooled myself—as usual. He is 
actually repellent to me. It was because I am 
thoroughly dishonest with myself that I ac¬ 
cepted him. He has gone back to New York 
and I shall write him to-night, breaking with 
him. 

“But my problem is of no importance. 
Yours is serious. Perhaps I can persuade my 
father to do something ... to tell the truth 
. . . whatever the consequence. That’s far 
better than that he should swear away the free¬ 
dom of a man who is innocent,” She spoke 


314 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


with a quiet calm which carried conviction. 
This was no desperate outburst later to be 
revoked. 

“Please don’t mix into this affair, Pat. It’s 
a matter for men. I’ll put up a strong fight 
and Burton, my lawyer, is very competent. I 
have a fighting chance.” Everything within 
him rejected the thought of utilizing Keller’s 
love for his daughter to his own advantage. 

“You have no right to demand that I sit with 
my hands folded,” she protested vehemently. 
“I am involved. I have been living on the 
money that was stolen. Because it was stolen, 
you are to suffer for it.” 

“But your father can’t confess,” he objected. 
“He’s got your mother, and you, to think about 
—and Wellington. His hands are tied. 
Everyone’s hands are tied. Not one soul in 
this situation can do other than he is doing. 
Can’t you see that?” 

Patricia shook her head stubbornly. “Any 
alternative is better than the one he has 
chosen,” she asserted positively. “I don’t un¬ 
derstand life. It is too much for me. But if 
there are any spiritual laws at work, if truth 
possesses any power, he will be punished.” 

“You say you’re going to work.” Gordon’s 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 315 


thoughts persisted in pursuing Patricia’s deci¬ 
sion through all its implications. “What will 
you do and where will you live? Your father 
will remain here until fall. He’ll have to, un¬ 
less he replaces me with another man. And 
Captain Tucker is quitting, you know.” 

“I don’t wonder. Why, I haven’t any idea. 
I’ll have to get some training which is salable. 
Then I’ll hunt up a job and room somewhere, 
I suppose. I simply will not live on money 
which was stolen and whose stealing put you in 
prison, Douglas.” 

“But you don’t understand what you’re fac¬ 
ing. A beautiful girl, working, living alone. 
Work if you will but live with your family. 
You don’t know what beasts men can be. 
Don’t do anything drastic until you get back 
to New York in the autumn.” 

“Douglas Gordon . . . what is the matter 
with you? You’d think I were a Jane Austen 
female! How can I live at home? They’ll 
be glad to see me go after I speak my mind. 
I know perfectly well how things will line up. 
Clifford will see it as I do. Mother will pre¬ 
tend that it’s ‘business’ and that she doesn’t 
understand it.” 

She started the car, gave it the gas with vi- 


316 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


cious emphasis and they shot down the road. 

“I’ll keep you posted on exactly what I do,” 
she promised as she dropped him at Mrs. 
Hale’s. With a firm handshake, she drove 
off. 


CHAPTER XXXII 


Douglas, Deab : 

I was so glad to get your letter although, of 
course, it was not like getting all the details direct. 
I thought it best to come home for a few days—in 
fact I felt I owed it to my family to tell them all the 
facts first hand. 

As you know, Mother, who is rather a stickler for 
the conventions, has never liked our living together 
in the same house; that is, since we became engaged 
—and now she is very insistent that I remain here 
until the whole thing is settled. Of course it is my 
instinct to wish to be at your side but, as she says, 
in view of the inevitable publicity which will attend 
this affair, it would be courting unpleasant notori¬ 
ety for me to return. You see it offers a fine oppor¬ 
tunity for those feminine feature writers to senti¬ 
mentalize about us: my loyal support of my lover 
and all that sort of thing. 

The only other alternative, it seems to me, would 
be to get married at once and it does seem as though 
you had enough difficulties just now without sad¬ 
dling yourself with a wife. I am anxious to do what 
you think best about this whole matter and am writ¬ 
ing you for advice. 


317 


318 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


The letter ran on for several pages and 
ended on a rather querulous note of resentment 
against this misfortune which bade fair so to 
interfere with their plans. It was not that 
Phyllis apparently blamed Gordon, but she did 
feel, one inferred from her words, that it was 
most disastrous for all concerned that he 
should be so unfortunate. In the same mail 
was a letter from Mrs. Winslow. She ex¬ 
pressed sincere sympathy for him, was con¬ 
fident that he would be vindicated, but hoped 
he would realize that, under the circumstances, 
he owed it to Phyllis to view their relations 
as committing neither to any definite claim 
upon the other. She closed with the sugges¬ 
tion that he write Phyllis to that effect and that 
doubtless, as a consequence, Phyllis would feel 
that she should return his ring. 

It is one of life’s most baffling features that 
only time and experience can test the genuine¬ 
ness of one’s emotion. More than one woman, 
for example, has remained single, faithful to 
the memory of a lost lover with whom, had she 
married him, she would have been utterly un¬ 
happy. We call it sentimentalism yet senti¬ 
mentalists can suffer as poignantly as though 
their emotions were real. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 319 


Phyllis’s letter was, no doubt, what Gordon 
interpreted it to be, an attempt to play safe. 
If he were acquitted and rehabilitated himself, 
she was willing to marry him. But she wished 
to risk as little as possible on the outcome; she 
was hedging. Probably he had evoked from 
her as much as she had to give. But how little 
that was. He felt no resentment, only a dazed 
realization that he had staked his happiness on 
one woman’s nature and lost. He was in his 
room, alone, as he read the letters. In one 
corner was a small airtight stove. He took 
the cabinet photograph of Phyllis which stood 
upon his bureau, tore it up methodically into 
small pieces, dropped them into the stove and 
touched a match to them. He would write 
her that evening cancelling everything. Then 
he went downstairs and stepped into his car 
preparatory to driving to Hereford to transfer 
his bail sureties. 

Caliban, who had definitely refused to be a 
quarry dog and who, after trailing Gordon 
home several evenings, had been permitted to 
adopt Mrs. Hale’s as his abode, greeted him 
with absurd manifestations of delight. Tail 
wagging frantically, huge mouth expanded 
in a grotesque grin, his great red tongue hang- 


320 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


ing out, he demanded to accompany his master. 
Much disturbed by Gordon’s visit to New 
York, spending the time as Mrs. Hale put it 
“moping about,” he felt nervous at any sign of 
Gordon’s departure. 

“Climb in,” said Gordon resignedly. “You 
don’t know enough to know when to quit a 
sinking ship.” Barking with joy at this op¬ 
portunity to proclaim his distinction from dogs 
who were forced to depend upon their own legs 
for locomotion, he settled himself with great 
dignity on the front seat. 


CHAPTER XXXIII 


“Dad, I want to have a talk with you.” 

Keller had come down from Boston on a 
morning train and was enjoying his cigar after 
lunch on the porch. He looked up from his 
paper with that expression of bantering affec¬ 
tion with which he generally greeted his daugh¬ 
ter. His face became more serious as he 
sensed the tension in Patricia’s attitude. 

“Go ahead,” he suggested. “Everything 
all right about you and Allen?” 

“Nothing’s all right about anything,” she 
affirmed and her voice betrayed the strain she 
felt. This was going to be a difficult inter¬ 
view. For a moment she had a feeling that she 
must be mistaken . . . that Gordon . . . no, 
Gordon was one stable rock in an ocean of lies. 

“It’s serious,” she said. “Let’s go out to 
the summer house in the grove.” She led the 
way to a secluded spot where they would be 
free from interruption. 

“It’s about Douglas Gordon,” she opened. 

321 


322 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


“I read about his arrest in the paper and later 
I saw him.” 

“So the local papers carried it.” This was 
news to Keller. He had thought his children 
still in ignorance. Engrossed in the imminent 
details of the situation it had not occurred to 
him to speculate upon their reactions. “Well, 
what about it?” He spoke with a hint of im¬ 
patience, feeling that the only way to carry it 
off was to adopt an attitude of resentment at a 
woman’s interference in business matters. 

“What about it? Merely that Douglas 
Gordon is innocent of a hint of dishonesty and 
you know it, Dad. You and Wellington are 
using him as a scapegoat. I may not know 
much about business but I can see that clearly 
enough.” 

Keller was silent. This was an unforeseen 
exigency. Something told him of the hope¬ 
lessness of seeking to convince Patricia of Gor¬ 
don’s dishonesty. The words died on his lips. 
He heaved a long sigh. 

“Pat, I’ve got to go through with it. It 
isn’t only me. It’s your mother and you 
youngsters. And I can’t double-cross Well¬ 
ington. I’ll see to Gordon’s future after he 
gets . . . after it’s all over. I’ve told him 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 323 


so. I wish to God that this had never hap¬ 
pened. I was going broke on the Bellport 
contract and I wish I’d faced the music. I 
might have come back even at my age. I have 
before. Now I’m in it, I’ve got to go through 
with it. But don’t think I like it.” 

“But, Dad, can’t you see that this business 
of Gordon is far and away the worst factor in 
the case? It was bad enough to”—she hesi¬ 
tated—“yes, to steal from the government, but 
then to shift the blame to Douglas—that is 
ten times worse.” She spoke with nervous em¬ 
phasis. “That is what I can hardly credit. It 
can’t be you, my father, who is doing that. 
Some fiend has taken possession of you. Oh, 
Dad,” she pleaded, “it’s not too late. If 
there’s no way out but making a clean breast 
of it, do it. I’d honor you far more in prison 
stripes than to see you go free with Douglas 
Gordon serving your sentence.” 

He shook his head, not stubbornly, but 
slowly and inexorably. “I can’t, Puss. 
There are too many others involved. There’s 
Denton, for example. I’m committed with 
him. I’ve got to keep afloat to meet that ob¬ 
ligation. There’s Wellington. And there’s 
your mother. If I were alone in this thing and 


324 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


you put it to me as you have—I might do as 
you say. But I’m not a free agent. God 
knows I hate to see Gordon pay. All I can 
do is to try to make it up to him afterwards.” 

Patricia looked at him incredulously. 

“How utterly absurd!” she burst forth. 
“Are you really seriously trying to make me 
believe that ethically it is preferable to shift 
this to Douglas’s shoulders rather than to 
abandon Wellington and Denton: both of 
them involved from the very beginning? Oh, 
Dad, do be honest with yourself!” 

“No, I’m not!” he snapped it out, trying to 
become angry. “But I name that factor as 
just one of many. I’m caught, I tell you. 
. . . trapped; tied hard and fast. I’ve got 
just one loophole and I’m using it.” 

“But that’s just the point.” She spoke 
slowly and with an effort at controlled calm. 
“The loophole. You must see that the treach¬ 
ery that involves is so much worse than the 
original swindle. I should think you’d grasp 
the chance for confession with relief. It’s so 
much the better alternative.” Then as he re¬ 
mained silent, “Or if you won’t confess, why 
not simply cut and run? Anything is better 
than this insane idea.” 


PATRICIA S AWAKENING 325 


“No, I’ve got to go through with it, I tell 
you. It’s all been worked out along those 
lines.” He spoke with discouraging lack of 
emphasis, like an automaton, invulnerable to 
argument. 

Patricia’s nerves gave way. “You mean 
you’re a coward!” she ejaculated with passion¬ 
ate scorn. “That you’re yellow. That you 
gamble and then welch when the cards run 
against you. And then you frame someone 
to pay!” The words tumbled forth im¬ 
petuously. 

“Yes, that’s one way of looking at it. But 
I notice you’ve done your share in spending 
the money.” Keller’s tone was sarcastic. 

Patricia winced. The charge was unjust. 
But it brought home to her her father’s always 
unfailing generosity, the bond between them. 

“I won’t defend myself.” She spoke more 
calmly. “If I’d had any idea . . . well, you 
know that. But I’m sorry for what I said. 
I know that our scale of living is largely to 
blame. But, oh, Dad! Don’t do this thing. 
I’m begging for your own sake. I know 
you’ll never again know a happy moment if it 
succeeds.” 

Keller groaned. “I don’t expect to. But 


326 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


I’ve got to do it. I’ve got to keep afloat. 
Then I can do things. Get Gordon out 
maybe. But I must be free, where I can get 
action. I’ve been through a lot of tight 
squeezes but I’ve always got by. In jail I’d 
be helpless.” 

There the situation lay after a half hour’s 
discussion. “Then I’m through,” Patricia 
spoke with solemn finality. “I’m going to 
New York to get some kind of training and 
then I’m going to work. I’ve broken with 
Beaudry.” In the face of Keller’s arguments, 
she proved to be quite as unshakable as he had 
been. 

“About Gordon,” she went on, “I don’t 
know that I can be of any help to him. 
But I warn you that I’ll do anything in my 
power to clear him even if it incriminates you. 
I just know that in the long run it would be 
better for you to shoulder this thing. There 
must be justice in the universe. And this is 
the rankest injustice I’ve ever heard of.” 

But she could draw no sparks. Keller was 
too grieved at this development, too disturbed 
at his daughter’s disillusionment, to display 
anger. That Clifford would support Patri- 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 327 

cia’s stand, he felt certain. He had already re¬ 
ceived Captain Tucker’s curt resignation. 
But it was his daughter’s desertion which hurt 
most. He tried to manufacture indignation 
against Gordon for his disclosure of the facts, 
but found it difficult. Patricia had sought him 
out and challenged him. She had a right to 
the truth. His heavy shoulders sagged as the 
two returned to the hotel. He did not alto¬ 
gether credit her resolve to seek work; nor yet 
her severance with her fiance. The one would 
in any case probably weaken in the face of the 
discipline and drudgery of whatever job she 
might secure; the other would melt perhaps 
under the ardor of Beaudry’s attack. 

Keller approved Beaudry though he did not 
like him. There was something about the 
man, a certain consciousness of his own recti¬ 
tude, not Pharisaism—that was hardly the 
word—but a curious and, to Beaudry himself, 
regrettable detachment which made him a man 
incapable of friendships. Self-sufficient, self- 
contained, he seemed to need nothing that a 
friend could give. His relations with Keller 
were courteous and, despite the efforts of both 
men, distant. They bored each other. But as 


328 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


a prospective son-in-law, he was altogether 
eligible. Keller was deeply disturbed by Pa¬ 
tricia’s rejection, particularly at this uncertain 
period, of Beaudry’s protection. He would 
enlist his wife’s counsel that evening. 


CHAPTER XXXIV 

During the following weeks Gordon was busy 
with the preparation of his defense. It looked 
none too promising; the ease with which the in¬ 
dictment was secured indicated that. He and 
Burton had sat down and systematically fore¬ 
casted the details of the prosecution. It would 
of course be built upon forged evidence sup¬ 
plied by Keller and Wellington coupled with 
Denton’s testimony. Burton would enlist 
handwriting experts to discredit the forged 
documents, but the difficulty with expert testi¬ 
mony is that it is so easy to secure for either 
side. 

And how to prove that Denton was commit¬ 
ting perjury? Lacking evidence of the deal 
between him and the company, what jury 
would believe that he was deliberately and 
gratuitously involving an innocent man? The 
only hope seemed to be to break down his testi¬ 
mony under cross-examination. That Gor¬ 
don’s previous record was without blemish was 
discounted by the fact that Denton’s was also. 

329 


330 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


Previous records meant little in a case of this 
sort, where the crime was unusual, the tempta¬ 
tion seldom presented. Burton would stress 
the point that the sums alleged to have been 
secured by Gordon were absurdly small con¬ 
sidering the risk involved; that had he been 
crooked he would have sought to secure a split 
from the Keller Construction Company which 
obviously had been the principal gainer by the 
entire transaction. But the company had not 
even been accused. 

“Why?” demanded Gordon as they dis¬ 
cussed the matter in Burton’s office. 

“That’s one of the worst features,” admitted 
the lawyer. “The prosecution has evidently 
been fixed too. They don’t want the truth.” 

“Then why was any charge brought against 
anyone?” 

“Because more than one department was in¬ 
volved. The one which smelled a rat had not 
been taken care of; possibly was not venal. 
But they are not the same crowd to whom the 
prosecution was delegated.” 

“It looks hopeless,” asserted Gordon. 

“No, not hopeless. There’s a chance of a 
disagreement. The prosecution doesn’t really 
care whether you go to the pen or not except 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 381 


in so far as their professional pride in securing 
a conviction is involved. But they do want to 
appear to be zealous in the discharge of their 
duty.” 

It was through Burton’s office that Patricia 
finally established contact with Gordon. One 
morning in September, the telephone girl gave 
him a message which was merely a request that 
he call Miss Keller at the number given. 

“I do so want to have a talk with you,” she 
said. “Can you meet me at, say ... oh, at 
the Cabin at six? We’ll have dinner there.” 
The Cabin was a restaurant on Eighth Street, 
not known to Grand Rapids, where the food 
was good and the atmosphere not consciously 
Bohemian. They had dined there the previ¬ 
ous winter. 

Gordon’s face was aglow as she entered, 
dressed he noted more simply than he had ever 
seen her, at least in New York. She wore an 
inexpensive dark blue tailored frock topped by 
a smart little black hat. Here was someone 
who did not question his probity. 

She squeezed his hand warmly. “Let’s eat 
in the yard,” she suggested. “It’s so mild and 
the stars are out.” They found a table in the 
corner, remote from the crowd. 


332 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


“Well?” he prompted. Then as she waited. 
. . . “I’ve absolutely nothing new to tell you. 
Busy trying to make the truth sound true, and 
it doesn’t—very.” 

“And Phyllis?” she suggested. 

“How stupid. I assumed you knew. I 
don’t know why. That’s all off. She never 
really cared for me,” and he told her the cir¬ 
cumstances. 

“She gave you as much as she had to give,” 
said Patricia. A long moment’s silence. 
“But she’s a bundle of complexes, repressions, 
conventions and that moral cowardice which 
marks her type. I knew she’d never stand up 
to it. 

“Well . . . you want to know what I’ve 
been up to. I had a talk with Dad as I told 
you I would, and you were right. He stands 
pat, thinks he has to. We didn’t quarrel, for 
after all I’m involved as a sort of accessory be¬ 
fore the fact, if there is any such phrase! I 
couldn’t very well pose as an angel of judg¬ 
ment. But I did tell him that I’d live no 
longer on stolen money and that if I could help 
you get clear I would, even if it incriminated 
him. He’s far from happy over the situation. 
Cliff and I talked it over and he has gone to 


PATRICIA S AWAKENING 333 


work in Schenectady for the General Electric. 
Refused to go through college on money that 
came that way. Then Mother tackled me and 
we did have a row!” Patricia laughed as she 
recalled it but she set her cup down with unnec¬ 
essary emphasis. 

“Those Victorians! What is the matter 
with them? Seemed to think that because I 
had no money to speak of I would take it ly¬ 
ing down. She had three grievances . . . my 
interference in this matter of yours, my sub¬ 
version of Cliff—and my breaking with Allen. 
So I packed up and came to New York with 
total resources of six hundred dollars; no, it 
was six hundred and six! Dad was away 
when all this happened about three weeks ago. 
It’s not so heroic as it sounds as I’ve had no 
trouble with him and of course can draw upon 
him if I have to. I went to the Martha Wash¬ 
ington and promptly started in taking a sec¬ 
retarial course. And that’s what I’m doing 
now except that I’m rooming in a little apart¬ 
ment on Eleventh Street with a girl I met at 
the school, Martha Linscott, an Iowa Univer¬ 
sity girl. She’s trying to break into writing 
advertising via the stenographic route. We’ll 
go round there after dinner. Allen writes me 


334 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


frantically at intervals but doesn’t know where 
I’m living nor shall I tell him.” 

“And your work? Do you like it?” 

She groaned. “I love to typewrite, but the 
stenography! I’m learning something, I’ll 
tell you, and one thing I’ve learned is to re¬ 
spect a good stenographer! How soft and 
worthless our minds are, we lazy butterflies, 
parroting opinions on art and literature cribbed 
from Town and Country , and feeling supe¬ 
rior, if you’ll believe it, to a girl who has mas¬ 
tered a craft, a stenographer! I find it des¬ 
perately difficult but I’ve got my teeth into it 
and I wouldn’t let go now for a job as Queen 
of Sheba. I’ll master it and prove my ability 
to earn a good salary as a secretary if it gives 
me brain fever!” The set of Patricia’s firm 
chin showed that she meant business. 

Dinner over, Patricia insisting that it be 
dutch, they sauntered down Eighth Street to¬ 
ward Sixth Avenue. “It was tactless of you,” 
laughed Gordon as they passed the Jefferson 
Market bastile. But though he jested, a chill 
and poisonous breath seemed to envelop them, 
an emanation from the dark forbidding struc¬ 
ture, an 1876 interpretation, apparently, of a 
German schloss. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 335 


Gordon cherished no illusions about prisons. 
He had read Donald Lowrie, Ed Morrell and 
Frank Tannenberg. He knew jails to be ob¬ 
scene hells, crawling with vermin, putrid with 
the stench of sewage, ruled by brutalized thugs 
morally as debased as, and often more debased 
than, the prisoners themselves. Incredible 
anachronisms, survivals of medieval igno¬ 
rance and indifference, the present-day prison 
remains a blot upon our civilization. But 
Gordon had himself well in hand. Though 
cursed with sufficient imagination to graph¬ 
ically visualize the menace which threatened, 
his will was strong, his philosophy stoical. 
With an effort he cut short the trend of his 
thoughts. 

“Do you know I’m beginning to feel the lure 
of the Village?” he remarked. “There is 
something so informal and livable about it. 
It lacks the sharp edges of New York; the 
tempo seems more leisurely.” 

“I love it. I’d hate to go uptown again.” 

They paused for a moment before turning 
into Eleventh Street. Suffused in the warm 
glow of autumnal twilight, the harsh outlines 
of day blurred by the dusk, Sixth Avenue was 
bathed in atmospheric beauty. The city 


336 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


breathed more tranquilly after the day’s hurly 
burly. 

'‘Whistler could have evoked something out 
of that,” suggested the girl. 

Patricia’s apartment was three flights up in 
the rear, in an old house which had been re¬ 
modeled and renovated for flat dwellers. A 
fairly large living room, not unattractively fur¬ 
nished, a tiny bedroom just large enough for 
the girls’ two narrow beds, a bath and an ab¬ 
surdly small kitchenette comprised it. 

“But behold!” Patricia pointed to it trium¬ 
phantly. “A really, truly workable fireplace. 
We don’t need it for warmth but it’s so 
cheery,” and kneeling before it, she kindled a 
blaze. 

“How it brings out the glints in your hair.” 
Something in Gordon’s voice, a caressing note, 
brought the color to her cheeks. 

“Come, sit here and enjoy the fire in this 
big chair,” she suggested. “I’ll change into 
something less oflicy. Martha won’t be in till 
late. She’s gone to the theatre with her beau.” 

Patricia disappeared into her bedroom, re¬ 
appearing transformed in a draped negligee 
of palest blue which in its seductive allure 
could have been evolved in but one city . , , 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 337 


Paris. She curled up in a big armchair flank¬ 
ing the other side of the fireplace and lighted 
a cigarette. 

“You’re rather breath-taking in that rig,” 
conceded Gordon, outwardly calm. 

She smiled provocatively. “It’s guaranteed 
to be a heartbreaker,” she said gaily. “At 
least the salesgirl said so. And I have pretty 
arms, haven’t I, Douglas?” 

He smiled at her naivete. “You’re a gor¬ 
geous girl . . . but why state the obvious?” 

She turned serious. “I suppose you think 
it’s an impulse, my cutting loose and learning 
stenography and all. It isn’t. This whole 
miserable business has merely served to precip¬ 
itate what has been brewing in me for a long 
time . . . and you’re chiefly responsible.” 

Gordon looked his question. 

“Yes, you are. Don’t you suppose I chal¬ 
lenged your standards at their first impact? 
Don’t you imagine I felt that tacitly they crit¬ 
icised mine? I had to persuade myself that 
mine were right to protect my vanity. TVell, 
now I know who was right. I’ll never again 
be politic or worldly wise. I’ll compromise no 
longer. It’s that which has made my father do 
what he has done. Most of the people on top 


338 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


are doing ignoble things. They may not steal 
but they do things almost as bad. The women, 
many of them, are spiritually bankrupt: they 
buy titles if they can afford it and give them¬ 
selves to men for whom they care nothing. 
They select husbands with a good Bradstreet’s 
rating. 

“And the men,” she shrugged her shoulders; 
“you know what Wall Street is. They curry 
acquaintance with people who can serve them 
financially, commercialize friendship and are in 
fiber coarse and common. I’m through with 
the whole gang. They are a corrupt, money- 
mad, soulless lot of bounders, male and female, 
not fit for a competent stenographer to asso¬ 
ciate with! I would rather marry a bank clerk 
and live in Flatbush!” She flicked the ash 
from her cigarette with a scornful gesture. 
“People really need so very little money. It’s 
merely their own inherently shoddy aspirations 
which demand money for their fulfilment. 
For twenty-six years I’ve accepted ready-made 
standards. Now I’m beginning to think out 
my own and live by them. I like it!” 

“Hear! hear!” 

“You may scoff but I mean it.” 

“I know you mean it and I congratulate you. 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 339 


You’ve found salvation as they used to say in 
the old days. Why should I scoff?” 

“If the man I marry betrays any signs of 
being in any worldly sense eligible, I’ll know 
at once that he’s the wrong one. I want a 
man whose standards are like mine, or higher, 
and such a man could never be eligible in the 
world’s eyes. I’m suspicious somehow of a 
love which doesn’t demand some sacrifice. I 
would be for me anyway.” 

So they talked on, finding as always so many 
ideas to exchange that the hours had wings. 
The logs crackled merrily for awhile then 
turned gray, flickering fitfully ... at last 
extinguished. But they took no note of them. 

“I’m so content,” said Patricia once with a 
deep sigh. “It’s like last winter. We had 
such good times, didn’t we? I’ve never been 
myself, really myself, with anyone but you.” 

To Gordon, the evening seemed, in recalling 
it later, magically insulated against past and 
future, against the world without. They were 
together and happy ... it was enough. It 
seemed as though they were held in an emo¬ 
tional vortex; the air was electric—an irresist¬ 
ible force drew them to each other. As Gor¬ 
don struck a match for his companion’s cig- 


340 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


arette and she leaned forward, her finger tips 
touched his and through him flashed an inde¬ 
scribable thrill. And when Patricia, arising 
from her knees from mending the fire, swayed 
uncertainly, the guiding clasp of his hand on 
her shapely forearm sent a warm flush to her 
cheeks. Once Gordon rose abruptly and 
ranged nervously about the room, staring ab¬ 
stractedly at the prints the girls had hung. 

“Do sit down, Douglas, that’s a good boy,” 
she urged. “You make me uneasy, and after 
all this time it’s not your back I want to look 
at . . . it’s your face. Are you afraid to sit 
near me? Am I so dangerous?” He sub¬ 
sided and they fell to discussing the Village 
and its significance. 

“The whole country sneers at it, envies it— 
and copies it,” asserted Patricia. “It’s amaz¬ 
ing, its influence upon women’s fashions, for 
example. And intellectually too. Zenith fi- 
nally patterns upon it. Psychoanalysis is only 
one instance. Imported here from Vienna, it 
has gradually swept the country.” 

But Gordon, suddenly and inexplicable ir¬ 
ritable, disagreed. “Superficially it is attrac¬ 
tive,” he averred. “But it’s populated prin¬ 
cipally by egotists; people lacking authentic 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 341 


talent whose ego is so overpowering that they 
fondly conceive themselves misunderstood 
geniuses.” 

“Douglas . . . will you teach me to roll a 
cigarette?” Patricia asked. “I know I’d like 
them so much better. You know how, don’t 
you?” 

“Yes, I learned in the mining camps.” 

She produced some papers and a little bag of 
tobacco. Adroitly Gordon rolled one, showed 
her how to turn it with the first and second 
fingers, guiding it with the thumbs and tighten¬ 
ing the pressure at the right moment. “It’s 
not easy to learn,” he explained. “You may 
spoil a hundred before you get it.” 

Patricia’s efforts evoked shrieks of laughter. 
They were such lopsided, pathetic parodies. 
“Now show me again,” she exclaimed. “I’ll 
watch every move.” Springing up she perched 
on the arm of his chair where she could study 
the operation as it would appear to him. As 
she leaned over intently, her bare arm pressed 
his cheek, the sweet perfume of her presence 
enveloped him in a fragrant clinging mantle. 
Gordon’s fingers trembled. The tobacco 
spilled. He jumped up suddenly. 

“Why do you torture me, Pat? You know 


342 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


I’ve loved you since the day you gave me my 
first lesson in love. I’d loved you for years 
before I ever saw you.” 

She stood, her eyes two sapphire stars, her 
whole body yearning toward him. “Then why 
don’t you take me. . . . Douglas?” 

In that clairvoyance which is vouchsafed 
stumbling mortals only in rare exalted mo¬ 
ments each knew in the ecstasy of that em¬ 
brace in which they melted into one, garments 
of flesh consumed in the flame of love, that 
their very souls were in that instant for all 
time united, indissolubly, irrevocably, inex¬ 
tricably. Time had ceased . . . yesterday 
and to-morrow were but the shadow of a 
dream. 

In a world without time, without space—a 
world miraculously shorn of human limitations, 
they found themselves fused. On the mantel 
the clock ticked unheard; the clatter of the 
nearby L was to their consciousness expunged. 
To how few in this world awry is love vouch¬ 
safed. And even by them it can but be ac¬ 
cepted with reverent thanksgiving—not under¬ 
stood. Transcending all savants’ theories, 
flouting religion’s dogmas, it releases unsus¬ 
pected talents, makes mystics of materialists 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 343 


and in thousands of unchronicled lives has re¬ 
placed wearied resignation with a life warm, 
rich, athrill with vitality. Marriage is no fail¬ 
ure. It is merely that the married fail. Few 
souls are so besotted but that they have in some 
moment of profounder insight, some mood of 
aching longing, some flight to heights afar, be¬ 
come for an instant attuned to voices, inaudible 
to their physical ear, which with quiet insist¬ 
ence have assured them that love is not an 
illusion; that some time, some where, their 
dream finds realization. 

“Why, Douglas! What has happened to 
us?” Patricia gasped the words almost inaudi- 
bly, so shaken was she by the intensity of the 
emotion which engulfed her. Her will, her 
personality seemed dominated completely by 
the cosmic force which, sweeping through her, 
held her subject to its purpose. She was, she 
felt, but a medium, a vessel for the expression 
of a power illimitably greater than any she 
could herself have conceived. Blindly, in¬ 
stinctively, her fingers played over his features, 
caressed his hair. 

He strained her still closer. “Darling! . . . 
My darling!” he repeated endlessly • • • a 
man intoxicated. He was drunk with love. 


344 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


Tears of happiness welled from her eyes. He 
kissed them away. 

Then as they sat together on the couch, 
Patricia half reclining in his arms, came the 
inevitable retrospections, comparisons, remin¬ 
iscences. 

“It seems to me now that I loved you the 
very moment you came climbing over the gun¬ 
wale; all wet and flapping—and so quietly 
competent. But I didn’t realize it then, of 
course. I didn’t really suspect, even subcon¬ 
sciously, and begin to fight against it until,” 
she hesitated searching her memory, “until I 
got back to New York after that time I kissed 
you. I think that as I found how much I 
missed you it began to dawn on me though not 
consciously. You found me so dignified you 
said in New York. I suppose that was why. 
And you?” , 

“I’ve always loved you. I was born with 
the dream of you in my heart. But it was that 
autumn afternoon when you kissed me . . .” 
he kissed her again, “it was then I guess that 
it happened, though I didn’t know enough to 
know it. When you wrote me that you were 
engaged . . . that hurt. And I sought es¬ 
cape from the pain through another.” 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 345 

And so they talked, seeking to reveal them¬ 
selves to each other, demanding from love com¬ 
plete unity and understanding, secure in the 
knowledge that whatever faults they exposed 
the other’s love would forgive them. 

There Martha Linscott found them when 
she came in at midnight. 

“Who is that attractive man?” she inquired 
curiously after Gordon had left. “And what 
made him seem so abstracted? One felt that 
he might meet you ten minutes from now and 
not recognize you. Is he always that way 
sort of dazed?” 

“Don’t hold him responsible.” Patricia 
laughed excitedly. “He’s got a good deal on 
his mind anyway. And now he’s got me there 
too. He just . . . no—strictly speaking, I 
did! No matter, we’re going to be married 
anyway. Oh, Martha, Martha, I m simply 
hopelessly, hectically, insanely mad about 
him!” 


CHAPTER XXXV 


Gordon removed his traps from the uptown 
hotel at which he had been registered and se¬ 
cured a room near Patricia’s. They were to¬ 
gether constantly; breakfasted at a neighbor¬ 
ing French restaurant and dined where their 
whim led them. Both girls devoted three eve¬ 
nings a week to practising stenography in their 
rooms, Gordon dictating the copy. He was 
impressed with Patricia’s earnestness. 

“After all, why take it with such desperate 
seriousness?” he inquired one evening as the 
two sat over their cigarettes and coffee at the 
Inn in Sheridan Square. “If things break 
right, you’ll marry me. If they don’t, you’ll 
eventually become reconciled with your family 
and won’t need it.” 

“Do you think I’d ever go back to that way 
of living?” she demanded indignantly, “and 
with people who had done that to you ? Doug¬ 
las Gordon! Don’t you understand me?” It 
was a half hour before he was forgiven. They 

346 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 347 


were completely happy save for the shadow 
cast by the impending trial. 

Seated later before the fire in Patricia’s 
room, she said, “It’s all my fault. I’ve known, 
deep down inside, that you were my man for 
ever so long. And you knew it. I could have 
had you last winter and then perhaps this 
never would have happened. Rut I was such 
a cheap little cad then; I thought I had to 
marry a captain of industry, at least. Douglas 
. . . how can you stand me?” Her questions 
were smothered in the impetuous ardor of his 
embrace. Gordon, the man, was quiet, dig¬ 
nified, completely poised. But Gordon, the 
lover, left nothing to be desired in fervor and 
intensity. 

“Douglas, dear ... I want you to marry 
me note. Let’s go down to the Municipal 
Building or wherever it’s done, to-morrow. I 
want so to be your wife. I want to live with 
you, to look after you ... to be everything 
to you. I can’t stand our being separated the 
way we are. I can’t bear to have to say good 
night. And it might make a difference too in 
the trial—if the daughter of John Keller had 
thus shown her contempt for the charges 
brought against you.” 


348 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


Then began a contest of wills which raged 
for weeks. “It’s not Quixotism—it’s not chiv¬ 
alry,” protested Gordon, “it’s plain ordinary 
honor and decency. For me to marry you 
with this jail term hanging over me would be 
morally a crime. God only knows how I long 
to make you my wife. Pat . . . you know 
how hopelessly, how madly in love with you 
I am. But let’s face facts. I might get ten 
years . . . twenty. Suppose I got twenty. 
I’d come out aged fifty-eight.” 

“It wouldn’t make any difference.” Patri¬ 
cia’s eyes were wet. “Never as long as I lived 
could I ever look at another man. I’m your 
woman, Douglas. I belong to you . . . for 
always and always and always. I would never 
have believed myself capable of such a love.” 
But Gordon was adamant. 

One evening when he was absent in Bellport 
where he had gone to secure affidavits from 
his bank covering the details of his deposits, 
the telephone rang. Martha was out and Pa¬ 
tricia answered. 

“Mr. Keller to see you, Miss.” It was the 
hall man’s voice. 

“Send him up.” 

Keller’s step was heavy and old as he 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 349 


climbed the stairs. She greeted him challeng- 
ingly. 

“Look pretty comfortable here,” was her 
father’s comment as he shed his topcoat and 
sat down wearily. “We’re taking an apart¬ 
ment ourselves on Park Avenue, Mother and 
I. I’ve let the house for a year. She returns 
from Jasmine to-morrow. You look well, I’ll 
confess.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t know 
what the world’s coming to. Why don’t you 
come home, Pat? We need you and won’t in¬ 
terfere with any of your independent plans for 
earning a living. How’s it coming anyway?” 

“I can take eighty words. Must get up to 
a hundred and twenty before I’m satisfied. 
Then I’ll get a job!” She spoke with deci¬ 
sion. “As for coming home, I’m afraid it 
would be embarrassing. Douglas is here 
every night when he’s in New York. \Yere 
going to be married.” 

“Holy mackerel! You don’t mean Gor¬ 
don?” 

“Of course.” 

He seemed visibly to lose size and weight as 
he sat there. He put his hand to his head in a 
dazed fashion. “But you must be crazy, girl. 
He’s going to be tried in January. And Den- 


350 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


ton’s testimony will send him over the road for 
sure. He probably will get ten years. 
What’s the idea of all this? If you wanted 
the man, why didn’t you take him before all 
this business came up?” 

“Because I didn’t realize that I loved him,” 
Patricia said with simple dignity. “But now 
I do, and it wouldn’t make any difference to 
me if he went to the chair. I’d have to go on 
loving him.” 

Keller groaned. “Hell’s bells! Nothing 
but trouble, and more trouble. Next thing 
you’ll be telling me you’re married.” He 
viewed her with a sudden panic suspicion. 

“No, but we would have been long ago if 
I’d had my way. I’m constantly urging him, 
but he refuses. Won’t let me tie myself to a 
prospective convict, condemned on the strength 
of his father-in-law’s perjured evidence.” 
Her tone was bitter. 

Keller sat silent seeking to adjust himself 
to this blow. But the more he studied the situ¬ 
ation, the worse it seemed. Finally he arose 
weakly. 

“It’s all too much for me. I’m getting old. 
I’ll come again soon when I feel better and 
get more used to it all. You know where I 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 351 


am, Pat. Come in any time for money. Or 
’phone me and I’ll mail it. Good night. I’m 
getting old, child. And I fear my last years 
will be black.” 

She heard him stumble blindly down the 
stairs and found it in her heart to pity him, 
though his evil schemes were rending and tear¬ 
ing the very soul of her. 


CHAPTER XXXVI 


In that casual unstudied fashion which marks 
the Village, they found to their surprise that 
they began to accumulate a group of friends. 
Douglas and Patricia, utterly absorbed as they 
were in their own happiness and jealous of any 
interruptions, would have sought no human 
contacts, but it was perhaps their very happi¬ 
ness, the harmony and serenity which they 
radiated despite the Damoclean sword which 
hung suspended, that attracted others. 

Martha, a squarely built girl with heavy eye¬ 
brows, escaped but a few months from Yank¬ 
ton, was aquiver with desire to know the col¬ 
orful characters who dwelt in the quartier. 
From the broadly sketched types whom every¬ 
body knew, to the unobtrusive, hard-working 
folk, writers and journalists, who loved the 
Village for its informality and its atmosphere, 
she wished to know them all—and all about 
them. And she did know a great many. 
Upon the strength of some stories published 
in her college monthly, she proclaimed herself 
352 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 353 


a writer and thus sought and secured election 
to the Whitney Studio Club. She was volu¬ 
ble regarding Cezanne, Matisse, Picabia and 
the rest. 

Martha could perhaps have secured work 
among the ranks of the thousands of facile pens 
who earn a living on the staffs of the scores 
of magazines which pour from Manhattan’s 
presses but with the canny insight which so 
often marks the middle western college prod¬ 
uct, she preferred the longest way round to 
a copy desk in an advertising agency. She 
knew a girl who was drawing a hundred and 
fifty dollars weekly in that capacity with hours 
from nine to five and nothing to worry her 
after those hours. “Some of the journalist- 
magazine crowd do better,” she explained, 
“but they don’t last as long.” She had taken 
an advertising course in college; been repulsed 
by every agency of standing in New York, 
and now planned to break in via the steno¬ 
graphic route. 

Through Martha’s contacts, therefore, they 
began to meet the Villagers. There was 
Grant Woodruff, dark and bespectacled, hair 
banged; silent upon every subject but litera¬ 
ture upon which he would descant at length. 


354 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


He wrote book reviews and syndicated theatri¬ 
cal comment through western and southern 
papers. The man’s quiet sturdiness attracted 
Gordon and he would patiently submit to be¬ 
ing cross-examined about his profession, a sub¬ 
ject which fascinated Woodruff. “It’s real 
work, you know, a man’s work. We’re all em¬ 
broidery down here.” Woodruff was to pub¬ 
lish his first novel four years later, a sincere 
and distinguished work, largely autobiograph¬ 
ical, which created a sensation, the first of 
a series which would establish him as a signif¬ 
icant figure. He never confessed that he had 
any ambitions in that direction. 

There was Anna Talbot, flaxen-haired and 
in danger of fat, who was staff interviewer 
on one of the movie magazines. She knew 
everyone in the movie and theatrical world 
and, gifted with a light, satirical touch, would 
entertain them when in the mood with a mon¬ 
ologue about her experiences with posing 
celebrities. Arthur Fancher was another of 
their group. He earned a very decent living 
writing penny dreadfuls at two cents a word 
for the cheap magazines and himself possessed 
acute and sensitive critical perceptions. His 
own taste ran to Gissing, Swinnerton and 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 355 


Couperus. He derived real pleasure from his 
own work, he confessed, in seeing what he 
“could get away with” in piling Pelion upon 
Ossa. Although in his thirties he seemed in 
his boyish exuberance and his refusal to be se¬ 
rious, an undergraduate. 

At the Civic Club on Twelfth Street to 
which they had access through several of these 
friends, they met many of the Village celeb¬ 
rities. Hindoos seeking to enlist American 
support for the liberation of India, Sinn Fein 
advocates, a colored poet, Jewish intelligentsia, 
a playwright whose work some years later 
brought him world fame, and many artists and 
sculptors. Most of these people knew of the 
threat which menaced Gordon but far from 
discrediting him in their eyes, it lent a certain 
romantic glamour to his personality. What¬ 
ever their weaknesses and vanities, two qual¬ 
ities they shared in common, independence of 
judgment and skepticism of the world’s stand¬ 
ards. They assumed that he was, as his 
friends asserted, the victim of a frame-up. 
And when they learned that Patricia was the 
daughter of one of his accusers they found the 
situation irresistibly dramatic. 

As for Caliban whom Gordon had brought 


356 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


to New York upon his last trip to Bellport, he 
was voted quite hopelessly intriguing, a dog 
born for the Village. His inimitable grin was 
even immortalized in the pages of one of the 
magazines which for a brief period served as 
the medium for the message of some of the 
younger artists and free verse writers. He 
was devoted to Patricia and she had promptly 
capitulated to his eccentric personality. “He 
is so satisfyingly hideous,” she asserted. “He 
looks as though he belonged in the cast of a 
Mack Sennet comedy!” 

It was a strange period in their lives. Life 
was so rich and stimulating, fate had given 
them so much, youth and love, health and an 
eager interest in their environment—and then 
with bitter irony threatened it all. Sometimes 
for hours at a time they were able to thrust it 
from their consciousness. 

October that year was a glory of crimson 
and gold. Gordon had shipped his car to New 
York and kept it in a neighboring garage. 
Sundays found them with Martha and 
Fancher or Martha and Woodruff in the ton¬ 
neau, idling through the scarlet and yellow 
lanes of Westchester and Connecticut. Some¬ 
times they pushed north into Dutchess County, 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 357 


occasionally drove down into Long Island al¬ 
though the setting sun on the homeward trip 
proved trying. Generally they carried sand¬ 
wiches and a Thermos bottle and lunched by 
the roadside. 

One day they sat by the shore of a lake in 
Westchester, a lake which, dreaming in the 
mellow beauty of October, a pale amethyst in 
a setting of rich russets, seemed infinitely re¬ 
mote from Manhattan. Someone spoke of the 
pathos of autumn. And Martha quoted that 
poem of Mangan’s ascribed by him to Kemal- 
oomi born six centuries ago in Caramania: 

To this khan—and from this khan 

How many pilgrims came—and went too! 

In this khan—and by this khan 

What arts were spent—what hearts were 
rent too! 

For some reason it brought home to Pa¬ 
tricia the tragedy of her love. Tears welled 
to her eyes and bowing her head, she wept 
silently but uncontrollably. Why, she de¬ 
manded, should a happiness so poignant as to 
be all but unbearable be inextricably com¬ 
mingled with so torturing a threat? Her im¬ 
agination stimulated by the very intensity of 


358 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


her love pictured Gordon thrust into the ob¬ 
scene filth, the indescribable brutality and de¬ 
pravity of that correspondent of hell, a pres¬ 
ent-day prison; attacked by vermin, manacled 
to felons, exposed to vile diseases. Sometimes 
as she tossed about at night a prey to these pic¬ 
tures, she feared that her mind would become 
unhinged. And then in the bright autumn 
sunshine her fears would vanish; it seemed too 
utterly preposterous that a man like Gordon 
could suffer such a fate. Any jury, she felt, 
could not fail to grasp the quality of the man, 
his palpable honesty and uprightness. 

One Saturday afternoon as she was leaving 
the house she met her mother coming in. She 
had not seen her since their embittered parting 
at Jasmine some weeks previous. They went 
upstairs. She could see that the elder woman 
intended to keep a tight rein on herself. 

“Your father told me about you and Mr. 
Gordon,” she explained after some desultory 
conversation. “Are you sure that you love 
him, Patricia, or is it the romance of the situa¬ 
tion which appeals to you? You know you 
thought you loved Allen Beaudry. He keeps 
hounding me for your address.” 

Patricia regarded her mother helplessly, 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 359 


aghast at the gulf which separated them. 
This woman she knew had never known love, 
even in her imagination. Cool and untouched 
by life, she was like so many women of her 
period utterly incapable of more than the most 
flaccid emotional experience. She had infused 
her own false standards into Patricia and only 
by a racking upheaval had she ejected them. 

To try to interpret herself to such a woman 
was hopeless. Patricia contented herself with 
saying, “No, the situation does not impress 
me as being romantic; merely most unfortu¬ 
nate. I love Douglas and can never love any¬ 
one else.” 

Her mother’s plea that she return to her 
house she met with a patient refusal. “It is 
too impossible,” she explained. “I don’t know 
how long I shall have him. Now I see him 
continually except when I’m at the school. 
And it’s hardly conceivable that father would 
enjoy contact with him under the circum¬ 
stances.” 

“But they needn’t meet. And it looks so 
strange: your being away from home, yet in 
New York. People are talking.” 

Patricia laughed hysterically. 

“Forgive me, Mother. But Mrs. Grundy 


360 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


seems rather unimportant just now—in the 
face of this incredible situation. Don’t you 
understand? Douglas may be sent to jail and 
it’s father who’s sending him.” 

“It’s always important,” insisted Mrs. Kel¬ 
ler primly, “what people think and say. If it 
weren’t for that people would be doing all 
kinds of obnoxious things. They’re restrained 
by public opinion. Certainly a girl’s place is 
in her own home until she’s married: a girl of 
your position and advantages.” 

Patricia gazed at her speculatively. 

“Let’s not discuss it, Mother,” she said 
finally. “I haven’t the slightest intention of 
returning—ever. Why waste our energy in 
argument ?” 

So the situation remained. 

Her mother left shortly, concealing her 
sense of ingratitude and injury. With both 
her children challenging the ethics of her hus¬ 
band, a man who, though he meant little to 
her save the source of her support, was after 
all their father, she felt that the younger gen¬ 
eration was indeed ungrateful and presumptu¬ 
ous. It was merely another example of the 
inexplicable revolt of youth upon which the 
newspapers and magazines were beginning to 
comment. 


CHAPTER XXXVII 


The court calendar had Gordon’s case sched¬ 
uled to be called early in January. The 
news that Burton was to defend him leak¬ 
ing out promptly focussed public attention 
upon the affair. It gave signs of becoming, 
perhaps, a cause celebre. 

Just before Christmas Patricia secured an 
opening, entirely without pull or patronage, 
traceable only to the endorsement of her 
school and her own ability to sell her services, 
as private secretary to an aged gentleman still 
active as the head of an old and stable dry 
goods jobbing house. It paid her twenty-five 
dollars weekly and upon this sum she lived. 
She was, of course, greatly aided by the fact 
that her wardrobe was sufficient, barring radi¬ 
cal style changes, for a long time to come. 
Gordon listened with intense interest to her 
account of her first day. 

‘‘Douglas, if I live to be ten thousand I’ll 
never forget the thrill I got this morning as 
I was engulfed in the flood that swept down- 
361 


362 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


town at eight-thirty. No,” she shook her head 
impatiently as the waiter suggested another 
pastry. “Something happened to me. I 
can’t explain it. It was like getting religion, 
I guess. I suddenly got such a lift, a sense of 
exaltation from the knowledge that at last I 
counted. This great roaring, screaming, ca¬ 
reening machine, New York, commercial New 
York, had accepted me as one little useful 
pinion in its structure. For the first time in 
my life it made a real difference to someone 
who was engaged in useful work whether or 
not I got there. And think of all those futile, 
idle, bored years in which I just rode, a useless 
passenger. It’s great to feel that you count; 
that you’re not utterly superfluous.” 

Gordon smiled understandingly. But he 
wondered if her vision would illumine the dull¬ 
ness of the drudgery which could not fail at 
times to oppress this enthusiastic recruit to in¬ 
dustry’s army. 

“And now when we’re married you’ll have 
to treat me with completest respect,” she jibed, 
“for I’m an independent, self-supporting 
citizen and can leave you at a moment’s notice 
and get a job!” 

He was glad that she had this absorbing in- 


PATRICIA'S AWAKENING 363 


terest to sustain her during the tension of the 
coming test. The trial, he knew, would be 
more difficult for her to bear than for himself. 
She sought to conceal from him the torment 
she suffered but her revelation of the wealth 
$nd splendor of her love rendered evident the 
bitter price in worry and despair she inevitably 
paid for her whole-souled surrender. 

When she kissed him farewell at the Grand 
Central as he was leaving for Hereford for 
the final ordeal, she turned away quickly, head 
bowed, to avoid breaking down. 

Gordon entered the Pullman, his own eyes 
misty, and sat down beside Burton. They had 
been over the case in every minutest detail 
during the previous weeks. Gordon knew 
exactly the offenses with which he was charged 
which included embezzlement of money of the 
United States, conspiracy to commit crime or 
to defraud the United States, causing to be 
presented to officer for approval and payment 
a false or fraudulent account, etc., etc. 

Between the two men had developed a sin¬ 
cere liking, a sentiment based upon a certain 
resemblance of intellectual and ethical out¬ 
look, although in temperament they were dis¬ 
similar. Burton thoroughly enjoyed his pose, 


364 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


which could not be said to be altogether a pose, 
as wealthy champion of the plain people. To 
illustrate exactly his attitude, one can but say 
that, did no favorable publicity attach to his 
chivalrous defense of the people’s interests, 
he would nevertheless have sacrificed his time 
and talent to their cause. But the fact that 
his name was nationally famed for altruism, 
his position that of a wolf who nevertheless 
elected to protect rather than ravage the sheep 
appealed strongly to the histrionic facet of his 
complex nature. 

They talked over their after-dinner cigars 
until well into the evening; then retired to 
snatch what rest they could in the speeding 
sleeping car. They arrived in Hereford the 
following noon and upon taking rooms at the 
Halsey House embarked upon the final ar¬ 
rangements preparatory to the battle which 
was scheduled to open the next week. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 

As Gordon and Burton entered the court room 
on the morning of the trial and took their seats 
at the long table inside the railing which sep¬ 
arated the judge’s desk from the rest of the 
room, Gordon surveyed the scene interestedly, 
wondering how many of his Bellport friends 
and acquaintances were present. Although it 
was snowing heavily, local interest in the case 
which was one of the most important which had 
ever been tried in Hereford had served to 
fill the court room. 

He recognized Mrs. Hale who nodded to 
him encouragingly and with her Mrs. Clark¬ 
son, her closest friend. A few rows behind 
them he noted Henry Tarr, the president of 
Bellport’s sole bank and with whom he had had 
many pleasant chats. George Livingston, the 
Bellport garage man, was seated close to the 
wall and waved a hand in friendly greeting and 
not far from him were Will Carter and Will 
Simmons, the first the Bellport hardware store 
proprietor, the second the real estate man. 

365 


366 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 


All these men Gordon had known casually and 
all of them, he could see from their emphati¬ 
cally cordial bows, were his supporters in the 
coming ordeal. “But,” he thought, “they 
will not comprise the jury.” 

As he noted the craning of necks and 
stretching of bodies to see him, the man ac¬ 
cused by properly constituted authorities 
of embezzling the money of the United States, 
he felt acute discomfort, until it occurred 
to him that he would have felt exactly as un¬ 
comfortable, perhaps more so, had he been 
riding in a procession as a hero, and with a 
smile of cheerful cynicism he settled back in 
his chair quite at ease. 

He fell to speculating for the millionth time 
upon the probable verdict when suddenly it 
was borne in upon him, he knew not why, that 
it had all been decided from the beginning of 
time; that this whole dramatic affair should 
be viewed objectively as a moving picture film, 
that every word said by him or his counsel, the 
prosecuting attorney or any of the witnesses, 
were predestined utterances, and that in very 
truth it was utterly futile to worry about the 
result. What was written was written. With 
the knowledge came poise and relaxation. 


PATRICIA S AWAKENING 367 


The matter viewed thus coolly bade fair to be 
interesting. 

After a few minutes Chandler Gifford, the 
prosecuting attorney, accompanied by Major 
Parsons, who was formally to represent the 
United States as complainant, sauntered in 
and sat down at the other end of the long table. 
They bowed frigidly to Gordon and his com¬ 
panion. Gifford surveyed Burton shrewdly 
and a bit uneasily. In crossing swords with 
this famous attorney he realized that he was 
challenging a man who, if reputation counted, 
was immeasurably his superior. Gifford had 
a local name as a bludgeoning prosecutor but 
he feared Burton’s suave cleverness. Never¬ 
theless, if his witnesses could be depended upon 
to keep their heads and stick to their stories, 
he could hardly fail. The cleverest attorney 
living may be defeated by witnesses who lie 
and stick to it. 

Judge Elwood soon made his entrance ac¬ 
companied by his court attendant, a grotesque 
looking man, lean and bony, who reminded 
Gordon of a character from Hogarth. He 
seemed an anachronism. The bailiff rapped 
smartly on the judge’s desk and proclaimed in 
pompous accents, “Please rise!” A group of 


368 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 


minor motions were disposed of, then Elwood 
instructed his clerk to call the case of the 
-United States versus Douglas Gordon. The 
impaneling of the jury quickly followed, a 
simple matter consisting of drawing by lot 
from the list of fifty men called to serve that 
month. Twelve men were soon seated in the 
jury box. 

Gordon observed them carefully. They 
were, he could see, an altogether average jury, 
save for the fact that Hereford being a seaport 
town necessarily reflected that fact in any 
typical cross section of its population. An 
ideal jury from the viewpoint of an attorney 
for the defense in a case of this sort would com¬ 
prise a group of men of the type who would 
inevitably be approached on the street by pan¬ 
handlers—men of benevolent aspect with an 
expression of easy tolerance, not lacking 
humor. The prosecuting attorney naturally 
seeks the very antithesis of this. He wants a 
group of dour, puritanical, tight-lipped con¬ 
demnatory pharisees; the type of man who in 
earlier days was, according to the melodramas, 
wont to be the village squire and a deacon in 
the church. 

The jury box filled, the clerk brought the 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 369 


two lawyers the small board bearing the names 
of the jurors in the order in which they were 
arranged. It was Gifford’s privilege to ques¬ 
tion and exert the challenging power first. 
He began to examine them about the case, 
about their prejudices if they were aware of 
having any, regarding the acceptance of testi¬ 
mony from various sources, about their knowl¬ 
edge of the present case as derived from the 
newspapers, and as to whether they felt any 
convictions regarding it. Some of his ques¬ 
tions would have appeared to the casual 
listener as quite irrelevant but they were never¬ 
theless planned to expose any lurking humani- 
tarianism which might later develop into a 
stubborn refusal to convict. 

One by one he eliminated several candidates, 
a retired sea captain who, it developed, had 
recently been converted to religion through the 
death of his wife and the providential arrival 
of a famous evangelist; a middle-aged propri¬ 
etor of a periodical stand who held the danger¬ 
ous theory that we were all potential crimi¬ 
nals given the necessary pressure of circum¬ 
stance; a stoop-shouldered, gentle-voiced ac¬ 
countant who confessed that he believed that 
“nine times out of ten” he could tell a crook 


370 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


from an honest man by his expression, and he 
looked at Gordon significantly; and several 
more. 

Then Burton began. He had, as Gordon 
knew, the right to challenge peremptorily fif¬ 
teen jurors. He began to eliminate Gifford’s 
most promising material. The two lawyers 
were, however, not directly antagonistic in this 
first brush. While Gifford was focussing his 
energies upon weeding out what he would 
have termed sentimentalists, Burton was less 
interested in this feature than in securing a 
group which possessed the desired mental 
qualities. He wanted men of sufficient im¬ 
agination to comprehend the likelihood of a 
plot’s being planned such as had enmeshed his 
client. Consequently he accepted certain men 
whom Gifford expected him to challenge, and 
refused others who, Gifford would have as¬ 
sumed, were promising jurors from the view¬ 
point of the defense. As finally made up, 
each lawyer felt that the jury was a particu¬ 
larly favorable one for his particular purpose. 
At the end of the morning session the jury was 
impaneled and the afternoon session opened 
with Gifford’s address. 

Without heat or undue fervor, he outlined 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 371 


the charges which had been brought against the 
defendant, explained exactly how the various 
counts overlapped and why, and then launched 
into a history of the case as he claimed to have 
visualized it: of how the defendant in joining 
the organization of the Keller Construction 
Company had demanded that he he paid a 
bonus over and above his salary, of how, be¬ 
ing a man of education, intelligence and fore¬ 
thought, he had, in all probability, even at 
that time planned the crime he later com¬ 
mitted; of how, after having won the confi¬ 
dence of his employers and the various repre¬ 
sentatives of the government with whom he 
had come in contact, he had subtly and with 
Machiavellian cunning corrupted the principal 
witness for the prosecution, a man who would 
be tried later for the same offense, Joel Den¬ 
ton, whose reputation up to this time had been 
without blemish, and persuaded him to con¬ 
spire to embezzle the money of the United 
States through the submission of padded 
weight returns. All this he asserted would be 
supported not merely by the testimony of wit¬ 
nesses but also by documentary evidence of a 
completely convincing character: the identi¬ 
cal weight returns bearing the defendant’s 


372 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


signature, the bonus cheques which were the 
motive for his crime bearing his indorse¬ 
ment, and other documents of a similar na¬ 
ture. 

To the assertion which would undoubtedly 
be made that the Keller Construction Com¬ 
pany profited far more than the defendant by 
this reprehensible crime, the prosecution 
wished to advance the well known fact that a 
criminal is interested only in his own personal 
gains; that wreckers in the old days often lured 
million-dollar ships upon dangerous shoals for 
the sake of the few thousand dollars they could 
salvage from the remains, that crooked pro¬ 
moters often bilked the public out of millions 
of dollars through methods which were so ex¬ 
pensive, the use of stock salesmen and mailing 
campaigns, that only a residuum of perhaps 
fifty thousand finally seeped into the criminals’ 
pockets. 

Although it was indubitably true that in¬ 
nocent parties profited or appeared to profit 
by the defendant’s activities, this was acci¬ 
dental and incidental. What he was inter¬ 
ested in was his increased bonus cheque, and 
if to put five thousand a month into his own 
pocket it was necessary to cheat the govern- 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 373 


ment of fifty thousand a month, he did not 
hesitate to do so. All history indicated that 
criminals were thus unprincipled, totally lack¬ 
ing in social conscience, selfish and self- 
centered to the last degree. In winding up, 
Gifford’s manner indicated or seemed to indi¬ 
cate that in his opinion the guilt of the de¬ 
fendant was so completely established that he, 
for one, was amazed at his presumption in 
entering a plea of not guilty. 

“Everything that I have charged, remember, 
will be attested to,” he reminded them, “not 
merely by the evidence of witnesses but by the 
actual documents themselves. Facts not 
theories will prove my contentions. If, after 
you have heard the witnesses and examined the 
exhibits, you are of the opinion that the de¬ 
fendant is innocent, it is of course your duty 
to acquit him; but if, on the other hand, the 
exhibits, coupled with the testimony of the wit¬ 
nesses, several of whom are gentlemen of the 
highest standing and of prominent position in 
the business world, convince you of his guilt, 
it is your duty to find for conviction, to return 
a verdict for the people as against the defend¬ 
ant. Please accept my thanks for your at¬ 
tention.” 


374 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

A few moments’ pause and then Gifford 
called out, “Mr. Joel Denton.” 

Denton came forward, took his seat in the 
witness chair and laid his hand on the Bible, 
looking as always like an instructor in pen¬ 
manship covering the grammar schools of a 
third rate suburb. His few thin wisps of hair 
were carefully arranged across his bald head; 
his clothes, although he was a man in his early 
fifties, looked as though they were designed for 
a man twenty years his senior. It was not 
that they were not sound and whole but they 
were of a cut and pattern to be found to-day 
only in the shops of unfashionable tailors, with 
aged clienteles, located in obscure side streets. 

Denton was a man so repressed and inartic¬ 
ulate by nature that he would obviously serve 
as an ideal perjurer. There was about him 
something so wooden and devitalized that his 
manner served in no degree to indicate the 
truth or falsity of his statements. Pie ap¬ 
peared in the court room exactly as he ap¬ 
peared in the daily routine, an automaton. 
Obviously a dull and stupid man, these quali¬ 
ties could not fail to be of service to him at 
this juncture. Although Burton might trip 
him up, the implication would be that natu- 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 375 


rally a man so sodden in his mentality could 
be tripped up whether or not his story were 
true. Gifford began to question him to elicit 
his account of the series of events which had 
brought him to this pass, the hapless tool of 
a superior mind’s nefarious schemes. 

Yes, he was Joel Denton. He lived at 
present at the Craddock Hotel, Hereford. 
He had, up to recently, served as government 
inspector on the Bellport Breakwater job. 
He had previously served in a similar capacity 
on other government contracts. He had first 
met the defendant on the Bellport job when 
the latter came to it as general manager for the 
Keller Construction Company, a year ago the 
previous May. 

As he swung into the story of how Gordon 
had first hinted at the plan of padding the 
weight returns, which he asserted was pre¬ 
sented in a conversation which took place be¬ 
tween them alone in the office at the quarry 
one afternoon a year ago the previous July, 
he betrayed not one outward sign of uneasi¬ 
ness. The only difference in his manner which 
could be noted was that he spoke more slowly 
and this was deemed natural enough for he 
realized that upon these details he would be 


376 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

sharply cross-examined. He gave facts and 
figures as to just how the money thus secured 
was paid him by Gordon. The agreement 
was, it seemed, that they should divide equally 
every month the surplus sum which Gordon’s 
bonus cheque contained over and above what 
it would have been had the weight figures been 
honestly rendered. This he explained was 
paid in currency. 

During all this testimony Gordon sat watch¬ 
ing Denton calmly and with the objective air 
with which one would observe a slightly dull 
drama. Denton never once glanced in his 
direction. Occasionally Burton would object 
to some of the witness’s assertions, in several 
instances where Denton said he thought or be¬ 
lieved that such and such was the case. Some¬ 
times his objections were sustained, more often 
overruled. Many of them were made merely 
to impress the jury, not because he believed 
them technically valid. 

Burton’s cross-examination of Denton 
yielded but little. The man stuck to his story, 
stoutly denied that the Keller Construction 
Company had approached him in any illegiti¬ 
mate fashion regarding the case, although he 
admitted that Mr. Wellington had talked to 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 377 


him prior to his arrest. This he asserted was 
merely for the purpose of questioning him 
about the whole matter, a quite natural and 
presumably innocent occurrence. Many of 
Burton’s questions planned to imply that Den¬ 
ton had been bribed to involve Gordon as a 
scapegoat were objected to by Gifford and the 
objections sustained by Judge Elwood. The 
day’s session ended with the cross-examination 
of Denton uncompleted. Gordon felt, nor did 
Burton deny, that Denton’s testimony would 
be difficult to shake. 

“So far as that goes,” Burton explained as 
he and Captain Tucker sat with Gordon dis¬ 
cussing the situation in the latter’s room that 
evening, “in a case of this sort, which is un¬ 
usual, the hope of the defense lies not so much 
in disproving the details of the evidence as in 
the obvious absurdity of the idea that a man 
sharp enough to instigate all this crookedness 
would be stupid enough to assume all the risk 
for so small a return. Had you been a crook, 
you would of course have sought a cut in the 
Keller Construction Company’s profits in the 
deal, profits which nobody denies surpassed 
tenfold the sums you are charged with secur¬ 
ing. Our handwriting experts will disprove 


378 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

the forgeries but theirs will sustain them, which 
cancels that. But in my presentation of our 
side of the case to the jury I ought to be able 
to make them see the point I’ve just made. It 
all depends on that.” 

But Gordon as he sat alone in his room after 
his companions had gone to bed and reviewed 
the day’s events felt far from optimistic. It 
was with a sense of escaping from a world of 
ominous reality to a dim dream realm of en¬ 
chantment that he took from his pocket Pa¬ 
tricia’s letter which had arrived that evening 
and which in the press of discussing the day’s 
events he had not had an opportunity to ab¬ 
sorb. He re-read the last sentences: 

I pray for you and with completest faith, my dar¬ 
ling, for I know that a life which has yielded us so 
rich a gift as our wonderful love must spring from 
a power which is infinitely good and merciful. Our 
love has given me not only you but faith and a sense 
of God’s immanence. I know that you will soon be 
free. Patricia. 

The glowing words quickened his pulse. 
His mood of depression lifted. The banally 
furnished, tasteless hotel room seemed for a 
moment to vanish, and about him he felt the 
sweet pressure of Patricia’s arms. 


CHAPTER XXXIX 


By eleven o’clock the next morning Burton had 
finished with Denton, and Gifford called his 
next witness, Mr. Richard B. Wellington, 
Vice-President and General Manager of the 
Keller Construction Company. Gordon’s 
eyes were focussed upon him intently. This 
was the man, he felt, in whose brain had been 
conceived the entire plan of which the trial was 
the consequence. Keller, he felt certain, had 
but acquiesced uneasily while Wellington felt 
the pride and enthusiasm of the originator. 
As Wellington, his eyes bold and expression¬ 
less, met his gaze squarely, Gordon felt that 
his contempt for the man’s villainy was never¬ 
theless colored with a certain admiration. 
“The fellow is certainly a consistent crook,” he 
reflected. “He doesn’t lack nerve.” 

After the usual preliminary questions de¬ 
livered by Gifford to establish the witness’s 
connection with the case, the all important 
documents, the weight returns and endorsed 
379 


380 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


cheques, were identified by Wellington and 
admitted as evidence. 

Wellington’s story as elicited by the prose¬ 
cuting attorney’s questions was simple and di¬ 
rect. The weight returns had come in from 
Bellport signed by the defendant; had been 
entered and remailed to Washington without 
question; and the defendant’s bonus cheques 
filled out to correspond and mailed him 
monthly. The first suspicion that the witness 
and his associates had that anything was wrong 
was when a Secret Service man had called at 
their office the previous August and an¬ 
nounced that there was reason to believe that 
there was crooked work afoot. The govern¬ 
ment’s suspicions had been aroused, it seemed, 
by a sudden increase in the tonnage shipped, 
and it had placed a man, McConnville, in the 
Bellport quarry as timekeeper. He had dis¬ 
covered the discrepancy between the true and 
false returns and had promptly notified the 
proper authorities. A short time after the 
initial visit, the government’s representative 
had returned to the office; together they had 
gone over the books and records and had traced 
the crime to a conspiracy between Gordon and 
Denton; the latter being joint indorser with 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 381 


Gordon of the weight returns. Denton 
had been subjected to a searching cross- 
examination and had confessed, implicating 
the defendant. 

From the viewpoint of the Keller Construc¬ 
tion Company, the occurrence had been most 
regrettable, necessitating as it did a return to 
the government of large sums thought to have 
been honestly earned and requiring a complete 
cessation of certain plans for expansion postu¬ 
lated upon the possession of liquid capital now 
greatly reduced. Wellington’s manner was 
one of patient courtesy. The whole matter 
was a bad business, most unfortunate, but as 
it was obviously his duty as a citizen to aid 
the government in bringing the offenders to 
justice, he was ready to face the loss of time 
and the vexation of the trip with forbearance 
and patience. This was the impression he 
sought to create. The jury seemed to view 
him with that respect which the small town resi¬ 
dent yields the metropolitan man of affairs and 
Gifford’s own manner was unusually deferen¬ 
tial. He understood the value of “staging” 
Wellington so that his evidence might carry 
its full weight. 

Then came Burton’s grilling. He knew 


382 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


that Wellington’s entire story was a lie out of 
whole cloth. He handled him from that 
premise. Gifford was constantly interposing 
objections to the questions and their implica¬ 
tions, finally demanding of the Court whether 
or not Wellington was a witness or the de¬ 
fendant. 

“He ought to -be the defendant,” asserted 
Burton in reply to the judge’s warning. “I 
have witnesses to testify that those documents 
which this witness so glibly identifies are rank 
forgeries. And who, may I inquire, would be 
the principal beneficiary from committing the 
forgeries?” 

Step by step Burton took Wellington over 
the entire chronicle. How did it happen that 
the increased tonnage which aroused the gov¬ 
ernment’s suspicions had made no impression 
upon him, the general manager, the man who 
knew exactly how many were carried upon 
the payroll, how much dynamite was used and 
so forth? To this the witness replied that he 
was not familiar nor was he supposed to be 
familiar with the details of the Bellport job 
at that time. 

“But certainly somebody in authority was,” 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 383 


objected the inquisitor. “If not you, Mr. 
Keller.” 

“Then subpoena Keller,” snapped Welling¬ 
ton. “I merely assert that I wasn’t.” 

Question after question was put in an effort 
to entangle the witness. Burton, it was evi¬ 
dent, felt that to break down Wellington’s 
story was indeed vital and he hoped so to en¬ 
rage his victim that he would lose his head 
and expose himself. At one point Welling¬ 
ton, his eyes flashing, started for the lawyer. 
Burton stood calmly surveying him, his right 
hand clenched. The judge pounded vigor¬ 
ously on his desk; a bailiff stepped forward 
and the witness subsided. A laugh greeted 
the discovery that Captain Tucker who was 
seated in the front row of spectators had his 
leg over the rail in an effort to get into the 
fracas. Only his white hairs saved him from 
prompt ejection. The jury enjoyed all this 
excitement but Judge Elwood was plainly an¬ 
noyed. Burton, however, kept within his legal 
rights, accepting the bench’s rulings as to ob¬ 
jections without demur. 

Wellington did begin to flounder a bit just 
as the session ended. Burton had him contra- 


384 PATRICIA S AWAKENING 


dieting himself as to exactly what conversa¬ 
tion transpired between him and Denton at the 
interview which both admitted had taken place 
prior to the latter’s arrest. The two men’s 
accounts did not completely correspond and 
Wellington’s manner in detailing the con¬ 
versation was plainly not that of one detailing 
events from memory. It was rather that of a 
man inventing. But the lunch hour saved him 
for the time being. 

As Burton, Gordon and Captain Tucker 
walked down the corridor upon emerging from 
the court room at the head of the stairs they 
came face to face with Wellington. 

“You damned, lying, perjuring, hell- 
begotten sneak! You damned, dirty black¬ 
hearted sculpin!” exploded Tucker and with a 
right smash to Wellington’s jaw he lifted him 
from his feet and the man went crashing down 
the broad stairs to the bottom. He lay 
stunned. Some court attendants carried him 
into an ante-room but it was not until a half 
hour later that he was able to walk weakly 
across the square to his hotel. 

“By God, I otter killed him! I otter 
jumped on the dirty skunk as he lay there an’ 
kicked the guts out o’ him,” exclaimed Tucker 


PATRICIA S AWAKENING 885 


heatedly when his companions remonstrated 
with him, and the old man simmered along 
during the entire lunch chewing his meat with 
ferocious fervor as though he were devouring 
Wellington. 

Wellington failed to appear during the 
afternoon, Gifford explaining that he had “met 
with an accident,” but the next morning he ap¬ 
peared, a cut over his right eye, and the in¬ 
quisition was resumed. When Burton finally 
released him, it was to Gifford’s relief. The 
man had not been caught in a spectacular lie 
but the general impression was, one felt, far 
from favorable to the prosecution. The jury, 
if one could judge by manner and facial ex¬ 
pression, felt that there was something fishy 
about this big business man from New York. 
Burton had forced him into the position, try¬ 
ing to his vanity, of appearing extremely ill- 
informed about his own business. The jury 
was forced to conclude that either the man was 
incredibly unbusinesslike or was from some ul¬ 
terior motive pretending to be. 


CHAPTER XL 


The trial droned on. Several days were con¬ 
sumed in the testimony of opposing experts 
regarding Gordon’s signature. The chirog- 
raphy was subjected to microscopic analysis 
and enlargements exhibited to the jury. The 
forgeries had, as a matter of fact, been pre¬ 
pared very cleverly and while a laboriously 
traced signature is quickly exposed under the 
microscope, these had been very bafflingly exe¬ 
cuted. They were obviously not tracings. 
But were they copies? That was a problem 
for the jury to decide after the specialists had 
testified. After the case from the prosecu¬ 
tion’s viewpoint had been impregnably estab¬ 
lished and, if one were to credit the witnesses’s 
testimony, that had been accomplished, Gif¬ 
ford announced that he rested. Burton then 
arose and in a speech of considerable length 
but which nevertheless clearly held the jury’s 
attention, outlined the situation from his view¬ 
point. 

“You must seek for the motive, gentlemen, 
386 


PATRICIA S AWAKENING 387 


in the commission of a crime and I ask you 
who had the stronger motive in this instance, 
my client, who it is asserted profited to the ex¬ 
tent of a paltry few thousand per month, or 
his employers who profited tenfold as much? 
As to the testimony you have heard, does the 
evidence of a confessed embezzler carry weight 
with you, the evidence of a man who, if his 
testimony is true, stands confessed a thief 
and, what to many is even worse, a cowardly 
turncoat—a welcher? That man’s evidence is 
true in so far as it convicts him. He did un¬ 
doubtedly conspire to manipulate the weight 
returns. He conspired not with my client, 
however, but with the same elements which 
have bribed him with the offer of princely 
sums to stand here and perjure himself so 
that the dark forces which planned, instigated 
and executed this entire plot might escape. 
He seeks to implicate my client, gentlemen, 
for exactly the same motive which actuated 
him in the first place, lust for money. 

“There is no question as to his ethics or 
rather lack of them; he has himself told you. 
Does the leopard change his spots? If he 
would betray his sacred trust for money, would 
he hesitate to swear away an innocent man’s 


388 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


reputation and liberty for more money? A 
crime such as has been committed against my 
client, gentlemen, seems to you who, I assume, 
are men of probity and integrity, well nigh in¬ 
conceivable but I, as a lawyer, realize, un¬ 
fortunately realize, how frequently such plots 
are planned and only too successfully exe¬ 
cuted.” He went on to cite many instances. 
He pointed out the manifest absurdity of Gor¬ 
don’s being content with such small gains when 
by approaching his employers he might have 
netted much larger sums, nor did he neglect to 
refer repeatedly to the defendant’s past record 
which the prosecution after careful investiga¬ 
tion had had to grant was stainless. 

Following Burton’s speech, the cashier of 
the Bellport bank testified regarding the de¬ 
tails of Gordon’s deposits, evidence which 
seemed to contradict the prosecution regard¬ 
ing the amounts of the bonus cheques. Vari¬ 
ous character witnesses were then called to 
testify to their confidence in Gordon’s char¬ 
acter, their faith in his innocence. And finally 
the defendant himself took the stand. 

There was a stir in the court room as Gordon 
took his seat in the witness chair, laid his hand 
on the Bible and swore to tell the truth. His 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 389 


manner was quiet, yet resolute. He spoke 
distinctly and with an air of candor which it 
was evident registered favorably with his 
listeners. After a few questions Burton left 
him to tell the whole story in his own way. 
He began with his original connection with the 
Keller Construction Company, passed briefly 
over the period culminating in his arrest and 
then in explicit detail narrated, everything 
which had taken place in his interview with 
Wellington at the New York office. Gifford’s 
objections were squelched by Judge Elwood 
who was himself interested in hearing Gor¬ 
don’s side of the story. 

Burton watched the faces of the jury closely. 
With that intuitive sense that an able lawyer 
develops he felt vaguely uneasy about several 
of the occupants of the jury box. Some of 
them who originally had listened with eager 
interest to every detail had during the past few 
days sat with expressionless faces as though 
for some reason they had already come to a 
definite decision. And yet so far as the evi¬ 
dence itself was concerned, there was no reason 
for this attitude. 

Gifford began his cross-examination of Gor¬ 
don. He knew of course that an interview 


390 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


had taken place in the Construction Com¬ 
pany’s offices upon Gordon’s arrival in New 
York following his arrest, and it was obviously 
important for him to discredit the defendant’s 
version of the conversation: that Keller and 
Wellington had tried to bribe him to plead 
guilty. 

After futile efforts to trip Gordon upon 
points connected with his account of his method 
of indorsing the monthly weight returns, he 
finally reached this all-important matter. 

“Now about this alleged interview. It took 
place after you had been arrested. * You had 
every reason, if innocent of the charges which 
at that time you knew had been made, to sur¬ 
round yourself with every safeguard. And 
yet you assert that you did not even take the 
simple and obvious precautionary measure of 
having a witness accompany you.” 

Gifford’s tone was insultingly incredulous. 

“It would be interesting to have you explain 
that. You haven’t one witness to support 
your assertion that you were offered a bribe— 
have you, Mr. Gordon? Only those who say 
that you said that such a conversation took 
place.” 

A sudden movement in the rear of the 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 391 


packed court room broke the momentary si¬ 
lence which followed Gifford’s query. A 
woman rose suddenly. 

“I can testify that Mr. Gordon was offered 
a bribe to plead guilty.” Her voice sharpened 
by tense emotion rose clear, high-pitched and 
penetrating above the confusion. “I am Pa¬ 
tricia Keller. 1*11 be glad to tell the whole 
story.” 

Patricia, quite unaware of the breach of 
court etiquette she had committed, stood wait¬ 
ing for the uproar she had caused to subside. 
A bailiff had promptly started for her: Burton 
had sprung to his feet: Gifford, certain that 
Burton had staged this theatrical coup, was 
shouting incoherent objections: the judge sat 
in speechless amazement. 

Out of the clamor it developed that Burton, 
instantly adapting his program to this new 
factor, demanded the right to call Patricia as 
a witness. 

A target for the gaze of hundreds she 
walked forward and seated herself. Her eyes 
as they sought Gordon’s betrayed defiance and 
asked forgiveness. For days they had 
wrangled over this issue. But Gordon’s plea 
that if she insisted upon testifying the prose- 


392 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


cution would call her father, whose denial 
would cancel the effect of her statements, had 
secured her promise of silence. His real ob¬ 
jection was of course that he could not bear 
the thought of Patricia’s being forced into 
the position of condemning her own father to 
prison. 

Only too plainly she showed the effect of the 
strain under which, waiting for news in New 
York, she had labored. Her eyes, abnormally 
large by contrast with her thin cheeks, shone 
with unnatural brightness. And yet never 
had she looked more beautiful: a beauty that 
the former Patricia, unawakened, her soul 
buried beneath the fleshpots, could never have 
achieved. 

For a long, long instant her eyes and Gor¬ 
don’s met and held. It was as though through 
some psychic sixth sense they actually com¬ 
muned. Then Gifford resumed his badgering. 

But the incident had shaken the prosecutor’s 
poise. Gordon’s explanation delivered with 
simple candor that he had taken no witnesses 
for the obvious reason that he foresaw that his 
employers would in that case avoid committing 
themselves destroyed the effect of the question 
to which it was a reply. Gifford wondered if 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 393 

he would shortly find himself prosecuting his 
own witness, Wellington. Certainly someone 
had connived with Denton. If Gordon were 
acquitted, clearly the culprits must be sought 
“higher up”: a fact obvious, of course, to Well¬ 
ington and Keller. 

From the moment of Patricia’s advent Gif¬ 
ford’s inquisition seemed to lack vigor and 
penetration. He failed completely in his at¬ 
tempt to shake the witness’s story and finally 
expressed himself as satisfied. His manner 
indicated or sought to indicate that here was a 
criminal who was so dexterous that even he, 
skilled as he was in eliciting the truth, de¬ 
spaired of wrenching it from this arch crook, 
this man with a face which belied his character, 
with histrionic ability to deceive the most 
skeptical. 

Although it was a violation of the established 
modus operandi, extremely trying to Judge 
El wood’s rigidly legal mind, Patricia was at 
Burton’s request then put upon the stand. 

Prompted at first by a few questions she 
was soon well into her narrative and was suf¬ 
fered to proceed without interruption. 
Her voice low but clear could be heard dis¬ 
tinctly in every corner of the great room. The 


394 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

newspaper men absorbed by the sheer drama 
of this piquant situation and forgetting to take 
notes sat motionless, like the rest of the spec¬ 
tators, hanging upon every word. 

She went over her interview with Gordon at 
Bayport following his return from New York; 
told of her talk with her father at Jasmine; 
his frank confession of the facts: that he and 
Wellington had doctored the weight returns 
and connived with the inspector to cast the 
blame on Gordon; her ultimatum and its re¬ 
sults. 

Dwarfed by the massive bench and the im¬ 
pressive dimensions of the huge court room, 
she looked as she sat in the witness chair, her 
fur coat thrown open displaying her simple 
blue frock, pathetically small and helpless. 

“I urged my father to confess and clear 
Mr. Gordon,” she explained, “and I am sure 
that he would have, had it not been, as he 
pointed out, that others were involved. His 
partner, Mr. Wellington, for example.” 

Necks were craned to study the man named 
who sat as impassive as the very granite of 
Bayport’s shores. 

“And the inspector, Denton. I tried to in¬ 
duce Mr. Gordon to permit me to tell all this 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 895 


but he dissuaded me. He has old-fashioned 
ideals of chivalry and he could not bear to think 
of profiting by the testimony of his accuser’s 
daughter, especially as I am to become his 
wife after this is all over.” 

A court officer had to rap for order at the 
buzz of comment this caused. It was too de¬ 
liciously romantic, this idyll 'of love and loyalty 
suddenly laid bare. It was as though a breath 
of lilacs and May meadows were suddenly 
wafted through the fetid atmosphere of the 
overheated, overcrowded court room. 

The eyes of a “sob-sister” on a Boston daily 
who had come down on the long chance that 
the trial might offer a story glowed in anticipa¬ 
tion of the coveted front page position her ac¬ 
count would occupy the following morning. 

“But I couldn’t stand it waiting there in 
New York, with Douglas—Mr. Gordon—here, 
his back to the wall: these perjurers seeking to 
railroad him to prison.” Her voice rang with 
indignation. “I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t 
eat. I thought I’d go mad. I felt my place 
was here with him. So I broke my promise to 
him and came. I hope that what I’ve told will 
help make the truth clear.” 

Her eyes swept the jury box. “It was a 


896 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


hard thing to do for I love my father too. I 
am sure that he never deliberately planned all 
this. And I realize that my words sentence 
him to . . Her voice broke and she stepped 
down. Blinded by tears, she stumbled. It 
was Gordon’s hand, his arm half encircling her, 
which guided her to her chair. 

The tension sna’pped and for a few minutes 
the tumult raged unheeded. Judge Elwood 
himself was too shaken to play his usual role 
of strict disciplinarian. Finally he restored 
order and quiet. 

Gifford, it developed, waived his cross- 
examination privilege. Also he betrayed no 
wish to demand a postponement while Keller 
was subpoenaed. The truth was that he 
feared to put Keller on the stand. If Patri¬ 
cia’s story were true, and he feared it was, 
Burton’s cross-examination would merely 
serve to confirm it. Then the case, already in 
jeopardy, would be irrevocably lost. It oc¬ 
curred to him to wonder as his eyes fell upon 
Wellington at the latter’s aplomb. He sat 
coolly surveying the scene as though he had no 
misgivings as to the outcome. And yet an ac¬ 
quittal meant serious danger for him. 

The lawyers made their concluding argu- 


PATRICIA S AWAKENING 897 


ments. Burton displayed an eloquence which 
was genuinely stirring. Judge Elwood him¬ 
self sat spellbound. In all his years of prac¬ 
tice he had never before heard so masterly a 
plea. An obscure provincial jurist, he was in¬ 
clined to resent the presence of this famous ad¬ 
vocate, to envy him his fame and financial suc¬ 
cess; but even Elwood could not conceal his 
admiration for the forensic power which Bur¬ 
ton released. As he concluded his peroration, 
the vibrant overtones of his final words echo¬ 
ing through the vaulted heights of the court 
room, salvos of applause burst forth. It was 
of course out of order but Elwood was so 
stirred that he forbore for a moment to hush 
the tumult. Gifford sought to discount the 
effect of the speech by praising it with a touch 
of sarcasm. “My esteemed opponent,” he 
said, “whose oratorical power has successfully 
swayed the emotions of many juries.” 

The case was then ready for the jury. El¬ 
wood turned to the jurors and delivered his 
elucidation of the law, his “instructions.” 
This completed he told the jury to retire and 
the matter was on the knees of the gods. 

A sheriff’s aid approached Gordon and led 
him and his group, Patricia, Burton and Cap- 


398 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


tain Tucker, into a large gaunt room at the 
rear, in which the prisoner was to await the 
verdict. Tucker, with the ready tact which 
one finds so often among those who might be 
supposed to lack it, maneuvered the party so 
that the lovers were isolated in one corner. 

“My darling!” breathed Gordon as un¬ 
ashamed, Patricia sought his arms. “My poor 
storm-tossed child! It’s so much harder for 
you than for any of us. And to have to de¬ 
nounce your father! I wanted to spare you 
that. I’m not worth it all.” 

“It was such a relief to come.” She strained 
closer. “The horror of the past weeks. The 
aching torture. Won’t you ever understand ?” 
She stopped as though hopeless of his compre¬ 
hension. “Douglas. I love you.” She 
spoke with simple impressiveness. “I am a 
veritable part of you. The very flesh of your 
flesh. Whatever you suffer I suffer tenfold. 
For that is what love does to one. You would 
understand if things were reversed. What is 
my father to me now? He happened to be my 
father. But you . . With a clinging kiss 
she tried to tell him what she felt. She sighed. 

“Those nights! I finally told old Mr. Clap- 
ham that I had to come. He was hurt that I 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 399 


hadn’t confided in him—gave me a leave of ab¬ 
sence—as long as I needed.” 

Tenderly he stroked her bright hair, caressed 
her cheek. 

“I don’t deserve it.” His voice was husky. 
“You glorious girl. Whatever happens,” she 
winced, “nothing can rob me of this. Your 
love.” He spoke the word softly, humbly. 
“I am not worthy. But I’ll try to be.” They 
clung close as though they felt that here was 
something eternal, inviolate, over which Time 
could not triumph nor circumstance destroy. 
Indomitable, unconquerable their love seemed 
to them the one rock of reality in a world be- 
dreamed in illusions. The grim doom which 
menaced lent through contrast with their ex¬ 
altation an almost unbearable poignancy to 
their emotion. 

They turned to Burton and Captain Tucker. 

“There wa’n’t a soul in that court room that 
didn’t know they was hearing God’s truth 
when you talked. I could feel it, Miss Patri¬ 
cia.” Captain Tucker spoke with earnest em¬ 
phasis. “I’ll bet that skunk Wellington is 
beatin’ it out o’ town this minute. Coz they’ll 
nab him sure. He’s the feller that doped the 
whole thing out an’ then got your father into 


400 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


it. We’ll all be out o’ this in another half 
hour. Won’t we, Mr. Burton?” 

Burton smiled. “I’m hopeful,” he replied 
briefly. 

“What time is it, Parson?” Tucker turned 
to Gordon. 

As Gordon consulted his watch—it was four 
o’clock—he drew out with it a plain envelope 
which had been delivered to him as he left the 
hotel after lunch. Deep in discussion with 
Burton he had absently thrust it into his pocket 
unopened. He opened it now. 

It contained a single sheet on which was 
typed one sentence. Gordon paled and 
passed it to Burton. He read it aloud, 

The jury has been fixed to convict 

A Friend. 

An hour later the verdict was returned: 
“Guilty!” 


CHAPTER XLI 


It was dark when Patricia emerged from the 
Grand Central. But was it Patricia: this 
sagging broken thing with eyes dull and red 
from tears? Like an automaton she had come 
to Boston from Bellport: driven across the 
city to the South Station and boarded the train 
for New York. She recalled nothing of the 
journey. Not a picture of the objective 
world had registered on the retina of her con¬ 
sciousness. Two scenes and two only—one 
real and the other imaginary—both equally 
vivid had been constantly before her eyes. 
Obsessions. One was when Gordon tearing 
himself from her arms was led away: to the 
jail. The other her Dore-like envisaging of 
the grim horrors which faced him. 

“Look out, lady!” A man barely avoided 
a collision with her as she stepped out on 
Forty-Second Street and stared back over his 
shoulder curiously as he passed. With unsee¬ 
ing eyes she stood struggling for strength, for 
sanity, for control. She had not believed her- 


402 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


self capable of such poignant emotion. This 
thing, which first dealt a crushing blow then 
probed cruelly. She saw Gordon in prison, 
beaten by cowardly turnkeys, racked by in¬ 
human tortures, exposed to loathsome diseases, 
fed with befouled food; to emerge, if he sur¬ 
vived, years later, a broken man, his life a 
twisted, riven travesty. 

A taxi stood at the curb. She stepped in 
feebly and drove home. Her step as she 
climbed to her apartment sounded like that of 
an old, old woman. 

“Pat . . . what’s the matter?” Martha 
paled as she saw her face. “Oh, I’m so sorry. 
I was afraid when you didn’t wire.” Then 
came the blessed relief of tears. Both the 
girls wept unashamed. Convulsive sobs 
racked Patricia. Over and over she repeated, 
“And I prayed so hard. There is no God. I 
prayed so hard. There is no God.” 

But outside the city was gay and charged 
with that festive spirit which marks the dinner 
hour. Work was over for the day. Happy 
throngs flooded the restaurants and the Great 
White Way. What was the fate of one ob¬ 
scure individual to New York? After a time 
her sobs subsided, but to Martha the stony 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 403 


despair which succeeded them was even worse. 
She resisted Martha’s entreaties that she come 
out to a restaurant. No, she could not eat. 
But she insisted that Martha go. She wished 
to be alone. Finally her friend left her 
promising to return within an hour. 

Patricia went to the window and stood look¬ 
ing out over the city. She spoke, half aloud. 
“He is my man,” she said. “I love him with 
every fiber of me. I love him. I love him. 
I love him so much that I know that death is 
meaningless. Death could not sever that 
bond. But this living death!” Her whole 
body was shaken with a tremor of despair. 
“And after they’ve tortured him and broken 
him, he’ll die. My wonderful lover . . . my 
husband. And my father did it. My father! 
I am defiled with his blood. But he’ll pay 
. . . God . . . how I’ll make him pay! And 
Wellington.” Her eyes shone with a strange 
light. Her hands which had been twisting 
and clenching the cord of the window shade 
suddenly broke it and with a snap the shade 
scurried to the top. 

Martha found her when she returned seated 
before the window gazing blindly over the roof 
tops. 


404 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


Keller had received the news by wire in his 
office within an hour of the rendering of 
the verdict. Now that the irrevocable had 
happened he was genuinely shocked. A dis¬ 
agreement would perhaps have served his pur¬ 
pose as well, although that would have meant 
the possibility of further search for those re¬ 
sponsible for, the embezzlement. John B. 
Keller was a man far from scrupulous, but 
this whole business of shunting the blame for 
his crookedness to another’s shoulders sickened 
him. It was something he would never have 
deliberately planned. His policy, shaped in 
large measure by Wellington, traced to the 
jungle instinct of self-preservation. And 
somewhere within the man, too, was a streak 
of superstition. He feared that somehow, 
somewhere, vengeance would be visited upon 
him. 

For, a long time he sat with a serious face, 
telegram before him, seeking some solution of 
the problem. After a time he could circulate 
a petition for Gordon’s pardon or a remittance 
of his sentence. But nothing could be done 
at present. He was disturbed, too, about Pa¬ 
tricia. The only person in the world he loved 
would never forgive him this deed. He saw 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 405 


himself, a lonely old man, scorned by both his 
children, deriving what satisfaction he might 
from the companionship of his wife, a woman 
for whom he felt but the most tepid sentiments. 

Then too he was constantly harassed by busi¬ 
ness worries. Bad luck on the Gulf job had 
dogged him for months. A storm had sent 
two valuable scows to the bottom; one of his 
dredges had sunk in New York harbor. The 
Gulf job was tied up with a strike. And an 
ugly situation had developed in his relations 
with Wellington. They were at loggerheads 
over the question of expanding to include the 
Farley-McCabe Corporation. The younger 
man urged it strongly; the older feared the 
added risks and responsibilities. They had 
quarreled about it bitterly and now spoke as 
little as possible to each other. It began to 
look as though he might fail despite all his 
devious schemes to cheat the government. 
Often of late he had been oppressed by the 
sense that he was pursued by a remorseless 
fate; that, stripped first of his honor, then of 
his children’s respect, he would end up bereft 
of the money for which he had sacrificed all 
else. 

“I feel as though I’d welcome the chance to 


406 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


decamp with a few thousand dollars and start 
over again,” he sometimes found himself re¬ 
flecting. It was in such a mood that he rolled 
down his desk at five o’clock and drove home. 

“Well, Gordon’s convicted,” he informed 
his wife briefly as they sat down to dinner. 

“And the sentence?” 

“Be remanded for his sentence later. Ten 
years, I suppose—’bout that.” 

From her husband Mrs. Keller had wormed 
all the facts in the case. She knew exactly as 
well as he how grievously Gordon had been 
wronged. But unlike her husband she was in¬ 
capable of honesty with herself. To preserve 
the Keller fortune Gordon must be sacrificed. 
To sacrifice deliberately an inoffensive and! 
completely innocent person was opposed to all 
the platitudes she had accepted from child¬ 
hood; therefore it was necessary, in order to 
keep herself in countenance, to invent some 
grounds for disapproving their victim. 

“That settles his affair with Patricia,” she 
snapped. “I imagine he thought that by en¬ 
trapping her he would in some way escape.” 

Keller surveyed her with incredulous dislike. 
“Let’s not add insult to injury,” he suggested. 
“I’m none too proud of this whole filthy busi- 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 407 

ness. If you know anything, you know that 
Gordon is incapable of what you imply. If I 
know Pat, I know that she’s through with us 
for life. And I’m damned if I altogether 
blame her. I got a letter from the boy yester¬ 
day. He said that if Gordon was convicted 
he was through too. ’Twould be his last 
letter.” 

Suddenly his anger left him. Their home 
seemed so empty and silent with the children 
gone. He pushed his plate aside and sat in a 
brown study. Mrs. Keller pursed her lips 
and remained silent. Her husband, she 
thought, had no conception of the difficulties 
she faced, the stories she had to concoct to ex¬ 
plain to her friends Patricia’s disappearance 
and Clifford’s abandonment of his career at 
Harvard. 

Keller left the next course untouched. He 
sat in silence, probing within himself for the 
source of the unhappiness he felt. Of late for 
the first time in his life he had begun to 
question the standards by which he had shaped 
his career, to challenge the code by which he 
and his associates lived. To swindle the 
government had not demanded a revolution¬ 
ary revision of his ethics. He had easily justi- 


408 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


fied himself upon the score that plainly the job 
had been accepted at too low a figure. It 
followed logically that the government was 
profiting unfairly at his expense. To doctor 
the weight returns had been only a rough and 
ready method of attaining justice. But this 
business of Gordon, this was a different 
matter. He wished that he had never known 
the man personally; had never developed that 
cordial liking and admiration for his character. 

‘‘And it all springs from this damn fool 
New York idea of keeping up with the 
Joneses,” he reflected with irritation. “I was 
happier on my first contract when we lived on 
the job and spent maybe forty dollars a week. 
I thought I had to throw a front for the 
youngsters. Now it seems they didn’t care a 
rap for it all. Pat’s a stenographer, the boy’s 
in overalls. And they demand nothing 
more.” He picked listlessly at his dessert 
then slipped into his overcoat and stepped over 
to his club. He knew that his wife could never 
understand these new conceptions. She was 
sold body and soul to the success-at-any-price 
school. 


CHAPTER XLII 


Two days after the verdict John Keller sat at 
his desk going over the reports on the Gulf 
job. He examined them incredulously. Im¬ 
ported strike-breakers had failed to keep up 
shipments, while the payroll had tremendously 
increased. Bankruptcy seemed inevitable. 
The figures sickened him. Although as a 
younger man he might have set his jaw and 
fought desperately, now he lacked spirit and 
resiliency. He felt himself beaten. Keller’s 
red beefy face sagged lifelessly in the wan 
wintry light. 

His telephone rang. “Miss Keller to see 
you.” 

“Show her in.” He swung around in his 
chair. He had no heart for what he felt im¬ 
pended. Patricia entered, her face expres¬ 
sionless. Her grief had robbed her of her 
beauty. The flame of life seemed to have 
been extinguished. Keller gazed at her in 
shocked wonder as she sat down, staring 
dumbly into space. 


409 


410 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

“God knows I’m sorry, Pat,” he said 
huskily. “I wish to God it had never hap¬ 
pened.” She seemed not to have heard him. 

“I’ve felt—lately—that I might kill you,” 
she said finally; “you and Wellington. ... I 
did denounce you . . . but it’s no use. It 
wouldn’t accomplish anything.” Her voice 
was muted and colorless. She seemed indeed 
to Keller like one who had just risen from a 
long and racking illness, so complete and final 
was her collapse. “It wouldn’t bring him 
back. I don’t understand it all.” Her voice 
sank to an almost inaudible murmur. She 
had forgotten his presence and muttered 
brokenly to herself. “I suppose I’m being 
punished for something, but that doesn’t ex¬ 
plain his case. He never did anything. 
He’ll never come out of prison alive. It’s a 
living hell. I know—I’ve read. You have 
killed him.” Her voice died away to silence. 

Keller said nothing. What was there to 
say? He was trying to adjust himself to this 
development. He had not realized how hard 
Patricia would take it; how deeply she cared. 
Through the closed windows came the subdued 
hum of the streets, crowded with the late after¬ 
noon traffic. He arose and paced nervously 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 411 


up and down, up and down. Patricia sat 
staring sightlessly at her hands which lay list¬ 
lessly in her lap. 

In the outside office rose a girl’s voice in gay 
laughter. It was the girl at the switchboard 
bantering someone over the telephone. “I’ll 
bet you pull that line on every girl. I say,” 
she spoke louder, “I’ll bet you pull that stuff 
on every girl. Some kidder! Oh, I know 
who you are all right.” 

Keller stopped at last and stood looking out 
the window. He had not foreseen this. Al¬ 
ways a kind, indulgent, typically American 
father, he sought to understand exactly how 
circumstance had maneuvered him into this 
position. It seemed to him as though he 
would do anything, absolutely anything, to 
escape this consequence of his acts. Some 
power, he could not identify it more closely, 
some implacable force seemed bent upon visit¬ 
ing a merciless punishment for his transgres¬ 
sions. It had attacked his one vulnerable 
point, his daughter, the one living soul whom 
he loved. 

And in that incalculable mixture of ele¬ 
ments which comprise a personality, a human 
soul, obscure reactions were taking place. He 


412 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


felt as though he were being broken upon the 
wheel, so powerful were the conflicting forces 
which exerted their pressure. Self-interest 
bade him sit tight. But though self-interest 
had always been his monitor it had never come 
into such direct conflict with other potent 
motives: his deep affection for Patricia, his 
desire to retain his self-respect. And the sick 
disgust with which he viewed the near future, 
the certain crash of the Keller Construction 
Company, bankruptcy, cross-examination by 
creditors; the whole humiliating mechanism of 
a commercial failure was a powerful factor. 
Then there was the menace of Denton whom 
it would now be impossible to pay in full. 
What would come out of the retort in which 
these elements were working, acting and re¬ 
acting one upon the other? 

He was recalled to the immediate problem 
by Patricia’s voice. “Yes, you have killed 
him,” she repeated lifelessly. “And I think 
you have killed me. I hope so. I don’t sup¬ 
pose you understand. The pictures . . . 
they keep coming. I try to shut them out,” 
her hand went to her eyes, dropped helplessly. 
“They torture them, kick them, beat them. I 
know ... I’ve read. They truss them up 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 413 


and leave them for days in solitary. I wish I 
didn’t know ... I wish ... I didn’t know. 
The pictures ... I can’t shut them out. I 
can’t sleep. All night . . . pictures. Terri¬ 
ble pictures. Rats, vermin, bugs, filth, vile 
men. It’s my head. The weight on my head 
is what I can’t stand. Please take it away.” 
She had begun to speak suddenly with an 
hysterical fervor, her eyes gleamed strangely. 
Keller looked at her with quick apprehension. 
His heavy red face paled. 

“There, there,” he said soothingly; “keep 
calm. Maybe it’ll come out all right. 
Burton is sure to appeal.” But his own voice 
sounded strained, unnatural. Patricia ap¬ 
peared not to hear him. When she spoke 
again it was quietly—hopelessly—gazing 
straight before her. 

“You see you can’t understand. You’ve 
never known love. Few people do. It’s a 
terrible thing. If anything happens to the one 
you love, you suffer ten times as much as he 
does. I always longed for love but now I see 
it’s a curse. It’s just a trap to catch you in 
and torture you. I thought it came from 
God. I thought it brought happiness. But 
I know better now. There isn’t any God, 


414 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


Or if there is, He hasn’t anything to do with 
this world.” There was something horrible in 
the calm detached way she spoke these words. 

“No, I’m sure that God hasn’t anything to 
do with this world,” she went on reflectively, 
“else this wouldn’t have happened. I never 
thought ... I never realized how life can 
hurt. It can’t hurt everyone so much. It’s 
when you love it can hurt. It hurts me too 
much to bear. Those pictures. That terrible 
weight. But I can stop it. There are ways. 
I think there is a God somewhere, and a place 
where love is not a curse. I’ll wait for 
Douglas . . . he’ll soon come. God would 
not keep us apart. But in this world if they 
see you love, they punish you for it. Perhaps 
we’ve all died and this life is the hell we’re con¬ 
demned to.” 

Keller was startled. He grasped her im¬ 
plication. And from his knowledge of Pa¬ 
tricia, the unlikelihood of her making an 
empty threat, he knew that this was none. 
The calm certitude, the quiet resignation of 
her manner were ominous. Wearily she 
arose, walked weakly, blindly toward the door. 

Everything in life is relative. A disaster 
which at first sight seems utterly crushing may 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 415 


in the light of a more deadly thrust seem com¬ 
paratively trivial. Bankruptcy, prison, dis¬ 
grace—all now became to Keller unimportant. 
That he should be perhaps the murderer of his 
own daughter, the one person for whom he 
deeply cared, this was Fate’s final irrevocable 
blow. Suddenly he attained a truer perspec¬ 
tive. Stretched upon the rack as he was, he 
saw but one solution and he took it. Patricia 
had not anticipated it, had not even conceived 
its possibility. Yet given the torsion of all 
the various forces which exerted their pres¬ 
sure, it was inevitable. 

“Sit down, Pat,” he ordered. “Wait . . . 
there may be a way.” She sank into a chair. 
He stood, silently thinking. “I’m going to 
clean up the whole business,” he said abruptly. 
“I ought to have done it before. Thank God 
it’s not too late.” He stopped, developing in 
his mind the details of his plan. “It’s as 
simple as A, B, C.” 

“I’ll prepare a complete explanation of the 
whole dirty business: give all the facts and 
figures, exonerate Gordon of course; try to 
clear Wellington—have my signature wit¬ 
nessed . . . then I’ll decamp. I’ll try to 
throw ’em off the scent by pretending suicide. 


416 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 


Whether that works or not, I’m not afraid. 
The average fugitive gets caught because the 
average crook is mentally subnormal anyway. 
The police have better brains than their 
quarry; but they can’t out-think me. And re¬ 
member you never hear of those who are never 
captured. 

“I’ll draw fifteen or twenty thousand from 
the bank—I’ve got it coming to me—and start 
over again somewhere. Change my name, 
my appearance, my line of work, everything. 
I’ll have to work fast and discreetly but I’ll be 
ready for the getaway within a week. I’m 
getting old. I’m no longer ambitious for 
success. I’ll scratch along all right, somehow. 
And I’ll keep your mother going by sending 
her money throtigh the mail; only don’t think 
it will be postmarked from within a thousand 
miles of where I am. Maybe she’ll collect my 
life insurance.” Keller spoke with an enthusi¬ 
asm he hadn’t evinced for weeks. 

Patricia looked up incredulously. Was this 
a trick, a clumsy attempt to alleviate her 
anguish? 

Then she saw that he meant it. “But your 
business . . . the company?” 

“Going to blow up anyway.” 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 417 


At length the full force of his pro¬ 
posal penetrated her numbed consciousness. 
Heaven opened before her. She laid her head 
on her arm and the tears poured forth. Tears 
of relief? Joy? Pity for her father and his 
future? She did not know. She knew only 
that miraculously a crushing load had lifted; 
her every nerve seemed to relax. At least her 
father had redeemed his worst offense, that 
against Gordon. And as he said, he would 
probably escape. 

“There, there now, puss,” he patted her bent 
head. “Don’t cry. You’ve got your man 
back. Now you’ll be happy. And I’ll feel a 
good deal better myself. I feel happier this 
minute than I have for months.” 

As she arose to leave a few minutes later she 
felt torn with conflicting emotions. She had 
regained her lover and in the same act her 
father—the kindly generous comrade who all 
her life had meant so much to her—only to lose 
him again for always. It could have been so 
different. There was a sincere affection be¬ 
tween the two men . . . had been, anyway. 
Now in gaining one, she lost the other. And 
there was no escape—no solution. What a 
price love exacted. Yet it must be paid. 


418 PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 

Nor did it occur to her to hesitate. Better 
that her father disappear into a silence as pro¬ 
found and eternal as death, than that he be 
subject to the tortures of prison life. 

But her heart bled. This was perhaps the 
last time she would ever see him, for fearing 
to involve her in his daring coup he had for¬ 
bidden further contact. ‘‘Oh, Dad, I might 
have known you wouldn’t let Douglas pay!” 
she exclaimed. 

He winced. “I might have; but I’m glad I 
haven’t,” he was honest enough to say. A 
long embrace—a stifled sob—and the door 
closed. 

He stepped to the window where for a 
long time he stood staring at the electric 
sign which faced the Sixth Avenue L station 
at Forty-second Street. Here was the arena 
in which he’d fought his way upwards from 
the time of his arrival as a youth in his 
twenties, this beautiful New York—colorful, 
seductive, intoxicating . . . never more beau¬ 
tiful than now in the pale glow of the early 
twilight. A faint haze—a veil flung over the 
sharp outlines of the buildings—obscured the 
garish detail and left but the Babylonic gran¬ 
deur, the monolithic masses which are New 


PATRICIA’S AWAKENING 419 


York. Floating aloft, a touch from the 
Arabian Nights, the Bush Building hung like 
a golden lamp. And now he had to leave it 
. . . forever. 

He had played with all the skill and daring 
he possessed and not without success. Now 
it was over. He had lost and was forever 
debarred from another chance. In some 
alien land, disguised under a pseudonym, 
he would eke out a lonely obscure existence, 
bereft of the one he loved, Patricia; seeking 
what solace he could salvage from memories 
of happier years. He had failed. Yet was 
his failure entirely one of circumstances? 
Did it not lie deeper? Had he not been seek¬ 
ing a worthless prize? 

In thirty years John Keller had read but 
one poem. And from it arose to the surface 
of his consciousness a quatrain, 

The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon 

Turns Ashes—or it prospers; and anon, 

Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty face 

Lighting a little Hour or two—is gone. 

He turned to his desk, sat down heavily, and 
began writing his confession. 




































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